«Not a day goes by without the press reporting on departments that are closed, opened in fits and starts, complete absences of staff, doctors who migrate to other more "highly placed" areas (ASL 8, Brotzu, Polyclinic) leaving the roles in the Sulcis facilities uncovered. The faults of this infinite drama are all attributable to regional politics which in recent years has allowed the impoverishment of the services of our territory, creating a long and endless series of small and large problems for which one would want to raise the white flag and clearly state "you have you won: let's close the Sulcis health system and let's all go to Cagliari".
The mayor of Sant'Antioco, Ignazio Locci, intervenes in the debate on healthcare and the shortage of medical personnel, shooting down the regional council and the health department.
Locci places emphasis on the objective absence of doctors which is sometimes used improperly as a justification for the "incurable" disease affecting healthcare: «In reality – continues the mayor – if it is true that doctors are to a lesser extent than as many as would be needed, it is equally true that those in force in the regional health system are distributed very badly, thanks to deliberate and incontrovertible choices: Sulcis, its health facilities, are in fact ignored by the regional department which does nothing to ensure human resources necessary to guarantee their functioning, diverting them to the most prestigious structures of the Sardinian capital, namely ASL 8, Brotzu, Polyclinic. Furthermore, we know of the daily difficulties that the management of ASL 7 encounters in filling roles and dealing with the "escape" of doctors from our territory, but we are not aware that certain shortcomings and certain tragedies also occur in Cagliari and its prestigious structures".
«We cannot pretend nothing has happened – says the mayor -: Sulcis is not among the regional councilor's priorities. The result is that citizens pay a very high price."
Two solutions are proposed: «Given that the essential problem is the lack of doctors especially in the Sulcis facilities, then at least two paths can be followed. The first is to draw up public tenders for the recruitment of staff that reserve a quota of doctors for the Carbonia and Iglesias hospitals, avoiding the "global" migration towards the hospitals in the Cagliari area. The other way is to say with concrete actions "Stop the token operators": and in this case the Regional Council needs to borrow the provision adopted by the Lombardy Region, where the councilor Guido Bertolaso has promoted a unified notice that will allow the hiring of free doctors professionals in hospitals. Sardinia must do the same because with this strategy it is possible to bring doctors back into the Regional Health Service, rebalancing an unholy system which, adopted by some cooperatives of "token operators", creates strong disparities. The path is clear: either we make fair choices, or we continue to mock the citizens of Sulcis by talking about a single hospital. The truth is that for now this ruling class is not even able to guarantee a "couple" of doctors for an area that has 120 thousand inhabitants."
(Unioneonline/ss)
