“As mayor of the city of Vibo Valentia, and in light of the media outcry over a simple choice to deploy law enforcement forces on our territory, I feel the need to scale back what has been a mistaken perception by many regarding the presence of military personnel outside the hospital in Vibo Valentia,” said the mayor of Vibo Valentia, Enzo Romeo, after the activation of an Army garrison at the Jazzolino hospital.
“By virtue of a reorganization of forces on the territory – explains the mayor – also in view of the opening of schools, during the last Committee for order and security held in the Prefecture it was decided to use military personnel and public safety operators in sensitive points, as always happens, starting from outside the schools. Given the availability of resources, it was decided to increase the level of security also of other facilities, including, precisely, the Jazzolino hospital”.
The choice, therefore, matured exclusively within this logic, and not from the need – for which, fortunately, the extremes are not seen – to have the hospital guarded by the Army. This is why I believe it is absolutely appropriate, indeed a duty, to scale down the media coverage of the case. Vibo Valentia suffers from pathologies common to all hospitals in Italy, even on the security front, as unfortunately confirmed by the approximately 16 thousand attacks recorded in Italy against doctors and health workers.
The episodes that have recently occurred in Vibo – concludes Romeo – must not make us forget that our doctors, nurses and operators in general make considerable efforts to ensure dignified healthcare, and the dysfunctions that Calabrian healthcare suffers are certainly not attributable to them. In conclusion, therefore, I want to reassure everyone: there is no “Vibo case”, there are no soldiers in the corridors of the Jazzolino hospital”.