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Stable staff, effective services and bottom-up control over local healthcare facilities. These are the requests that emerged from the discussion on the state of community homes and hospitals in the province, which began on Friday at the CGIL headquarters in Cosenza. The initiative marks the beginning of a process of citizen participation and listening to the territories, to verify that the structures are facilities capable of responding to the needs of the communities and not just buildings to be inaugurated.
The objective, explains the union, is to evaluate whether the “proximity revolution” envisaged by Ministerial Decree 77/22, implementing Mission 6 of the Pnrr, represented an opportunity or a lost opportunity for the territory. According to the CGIL, compared to over 60 structures planned in Calabria and the announcements relating to 26 homes and 9 community hospitals, the actual activation is below the national average.
Staff shortages and the case of Acre
The main issue concerns the staff. The CGIL underlines that the Pnrr funds finance building works and technological furnishings, but cannot cover current expenditure for personnel. To transform the structures into services, the union claims, a significant increase in the permanent workforce is needed, while the use of fixed-term employment relationships would fuel precariousness and would conflict with the structural changes required by the reform.
Among the critical issues reported are the only optional presence of family doctors in the new structures, the strong shortage of nurses for home services and beds in community hospitals which, according to the union, remain “only on paper”.
The CGIL also recalls the case of Acri, where the community houses were activated within the city hospital “in a formalistic way and without the actual activation of the expected services”. The lack of real planning for local medicine, he warns, risks taking resources and energy away from hospitals rather than lightening their load.
«We cannot afford the mockery of local medicine reduced to empty and inefficient boxes. We don’t need new structures but actual services”, states the CGIL, recalling the difficulties of operators, waiting times, healthcare migration and renunciations of treatment.
A social pact for public health
Citizens, workers, associations and representatives of Rifondazione Comunista, AVS, M5S, PD and Cosenza Cresce Insieme participated in the discussion. The regional councilor and vice-president of the Health Commission Rossellina Madeo also spoke, expressing closeness to the participation process.
The CGIL of Cosenza, together with the FP-CGIL, will promote a social pact between those involved in the defense of public health and the right to health. The path aims to listen, verify and monitor services territory by territory, with mobilization and reporting initiatives when necessary.