There's Marco, 80, from Cagliari, who arrived last Easter. And Giuseppe, 70, also originally from the capital, forgotten here since the beginning of the summer . Not to mention Guglielmo, a seventy-year-old from Iglesiente , who counts the days and assures us he's ninety. Three months like Luigi, a 50-year-old from Cagliari , who has been away since February.
Faceless names, elderly and mentally ill people with stories of loneliness and abandonment, parked in hospital beds and forgotten by their families and the world.
"People abandoned by their families , forgotten in the hospital", says Don Antonello Demurtas, chaplain of the San Giuseppe hospital in Isili , one of those outposts of local healthcare that is struggling, kept alive by a depleted troop of doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants forced to work grueling shifts and make sacrifices that are certainly not repaid.
In the Medicine ward, six of the twenty beds are occupied on a permanent basis. "Psychiatric patients who require specific care, and others suffering from who knows what, perhaps just loneliness . The nurses care for them with love and care, but they feel helpless; they can't do much more."