Healthcare Calabria. Franz Caruso: “After about three years of Commissioner Occhiuto’s management, the situation for the Calabrians has not only not improved, but has actually worsened”
“The latest review table of the Calabria Recovery Plan crystallizes the dramatic, emergency condition from every point of view, in which the Calabrian healthcare system finds itself. For about three years, Roberto Occhiuto has been leading the Calabrian healthcare system, who has benefited from a national legislation that, since 2019, has assigned further extraordinary powers to the Commissioner, has allocated additional resources and allowed an extraordinary hiring plan for Calabria that today, years later, has not yet been made operational. The people of Cosenza are well aware of the creative financial games that led to a financial crisis of hundreds of millions of euros for the Municipality of Cosenza, achieved at the time when Mario Occhiuto exercised the role of Mayor. Roberto Occhiuto was and is no less. As can be read in the latest minutes of the inter-ministerial table, in fact, the high surplus in the year 2022 is a consequence of the delay in implementing the interventions; delay highlighted by the numerous provisions of the regional health fund that should have been implemented for the provision of health care and for the strengthening of the LEA. Therefore, the money is not spent to provide assistance to the Calabrians. Money, therefore, available and not used. This explains the creative budget surplus of Roberto Occhiuto, unmasked by the inter-ministerial table for the verification of the health recovery plan”.
Mayor Franz Caruso stated this following the publication of the minutes of the Ministries on the Calabrian health system, which continues: “Enough slogans and fine words, typical of an excellent communicator such as Roberto Occhiuto, which Calabria does not need, as a capable and far-sighted administrator is necessary for its development. The evidence from the ministerial table, in fact, requires the implementation of facts to reverse a situation that is no longer acceptable. A still massive health emigration with a cost of more than 252 million euros, the failure to ensure Essential Levels of Assistance, an ineffective emergency response system, which does not respect rescue times in urban and extra-urban areas, for which approximately 28 minutes are recorded for the ambulance to arrive on site after the call, represent the emergency nodes of a regional health system that is now exhausted, in which the right to care and health is absolutely not ensured. A shameful situation that cannot be ignored and for which it is necessary that the territories, led by the Mayors, also intervene to protect public affairs and, above all, to safeguard public health for which we must feel responsible towards our citizens”.
“After 14 years of commissionership – concludes Franz Caruso – Calabrian healthcare has become increasingly impoverished in an unprecedented crisis. In particular, the last three years have dealt, among other things, a bad blow to the Cosenza healthcare system which has been depleted of important services and bodies, while it is becoming increasingly uncertain to think that the new Cosenza Hub hospital will be built. Hence my appeal to my fellow Mayors: let’s make our strong and determined voice heard. The right to health must be placed before any party interest, therefore healthcare must not have political colours. Let us therefore exercise together the function that the law assigns to the Mayor of maximum health authority. This state of affairs can no longer be tolerated.”
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