“Unfortunately, our public health system is now reduced to the systemic inability to provide answers to citizens’ requests for treatment. Lack of beds, long waiting lists, and lack of staff at all levels create inefficiencies and a flight to private services for those who can afford them. In fact, giving up treatment has become another social drama. We know very well that this is a general problem of the public health system, reduced to these conditions due to the wrong policies that have cut spending to the detriment of citizens’ essential rights. The few resources are often poorly managed due to the political and patronage mix that exists in the management of ASPs throughout the regional territory.” Peppe Scifo, General Secretary of the CGIL Ragusa, writes it.
In the CGIL press release we read again:
“The story of the appointments of the Extraordinary Commissioners, now General Directors, is a clear demonstration of this; it is enough to scroll back through the press reports to understand that the tenor of the fulcrum, within the governing majority of the Region, concerned the division of power between the parties of the government coalition and not the merit of the skills.
Yet despite the disaster, even more accentuated by the government’s national policy choices which continues in the wake of cuts in healthcare spending, in the hospital wards and public healthcare facilities there are doctors, together with all healthcare personnel, who work every day with great sacrifices and a spirit of service, in a situation of great discomfort on the part of users. But there are also problems of mismanagement, concerning logistical and organizational issues, which determine heavy repercussions on users and in general on the quality of services. Such as, for example, reception in hospital and outpatient facilities where people are often forced to wait long periods without even having a seat. It happens in various ASP facilities throughout the province of Ragusa such as the Giovanni Paolo II in obstetrics, as well as in radiology, as well as the Guzzardi Ticket office in Vittoria, where people wait in an open space in the summer and winter exposed to bad weather. To resolve these problems, we do not need an amendment to the Finance Law but common sense, organizational skills in compliance with the mandate and the people who ask for treatment by turning to public health services. Now that the transitory situation of appointments is over, the “new” management needs to get to work immediately, starting from addressing easily solved problems, such as the quality of reception and the purchase of a few chairs for those forced to wait your turn to visit. People, especially the elderly, experience this denial of minimum rights and dignity every day, and these situations have existed throughout the province for years. Last June 20, the CGIL took to the streets of Palermo, demonstrating in front of the Ars and Presidency buildings, to ask for the application of the Constitutional Right to Health in Sicily. The CGIL has been engaged for years on the front line to defend and relaunch public health, collecting in the various municipal Chambers of Labor many stories of suffering from citizens who are now systematically denied, in this province, essential rights such as the right to health.
We hope – finally writes Peppe Scifo – that the strategic management and the various management structures can take up this further request, without entrenching themselves in official self-defense for bias, and decide to intervene by resolving critical issues that are simple to resolve but have a great impact on quality of services rendered to citizens.”
