The ASL districts, in agreement with the Local Authorities, have developed the ‘Hot Plan’ program aimed at assisting the population and helping them deal with the summer heat, starting with the most fragile, especially the elderly and the chronically ill. The plan is already active and will continue until September. The elderly, who represent a significant segment of the population destined to increase more and more, suffer the negative effects of heat waves.
For the ‘Hot Plan’, each territory (Carpi, Castelfranco Emilia, Mirandola, Modena, Sassuolo, Pavullo and Vignola) has defined a coordination and an operational group composed of social and health workers strongly oriented to managing emergencies, whose contacts are shared to guarantee immediate availability and activation, while an “action plan” specifies in detail the prevention and assistance initiatives to be implemented when needed.
These include mapping the people who live at home at the highest risk – with particular attention to those who live in conditions of loneliness and isolation – and the activation of toll-free numbers connected to the operational centers of the various territories, in addition to specific communications to the population. If alarm or emergency situations occur, based on the reports from Arpa, the plan includes the activation of interventions towards the citizens most at risk.
Interventions can be of different types: from the possibility of temporary access to a cooler place in local structures and services for people in fragile conditions, during the hottest hours of the day, to home delivery of shopping, meals or medicines, from follow-up phone calls to check the state of health, to reporting to the Single Social-Healthcare Access Point.
“The heat alarm comes from Arpae and in a cascade the well-oiled integrated reporting machine of the Social Services and Health Districts activates relief interventions for the elderly and citizens most at risk – says Andrea Fabbo, geriatrician and socio-health director of the ASL –. In the hottest months, it is essential to disseminate information on prevention and the collaboration of citizens, who by adopting personal measures to combat heat waves can limit their effects, in particular on the elderly and the most fragile”.
