Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
Alessandro Di Battista’s partner, Sahra Lahouasnia, has arrived in Havana where the former M5s deputy is hospitalized in the “Hermanos Ameijeiras” hospital. A health team from the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome has also arrived in the Cuban capital, ready to provide medical assistance. In particular, there will be two doctors who will support the Cuban team and evaluate the conditions of the former M5S parliamentarian, who has been hospitalized since Friday evening after an illness.
The first messages on social media, the promise to friends to “do our best to come back soon”. The exchange of words on the telephone with Antonio Tajani, who feels he is “combative” and takes up the exhortation to “help the Cuban people”. Alessandro Di Battista survived the first night in the hospital in Havana, where he was transported after an initial hospitalization in serious condition in Santa Clara, following severe head pain. His conditions remain serious, according to the little information filtering out from Cuba, and at the moment they would not allow the transfer of the former M5S deputy with the state medical flight made available by the government. Together with the local doctors, the two Gemelli specialists arriving from Rome will evaluate him in the next few hours.
Waking up and taking tests before the transfer
Before being transported yesterday by ambulance to the capital, Di Battista, 48 years old and with two children, regained consciousness, having been lost for a few hours. In the first hours of his hospitalization he would have undergone a series of specialist visits – including a CT scan – necessary to define the diagnosis and prognosis.
The messages on social media from the 19th floor
Then yesterday, when it was morning in Italy, from a room on the 19th floor of the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital, he responded to some of the messages of encouragement, an avalanche, dedicated to him on social media. “I will do my best to return soon,” he wrote to Ilaria Loquenzi, a communication specialist, formerly on the M5s staff, who urged him to “not give up” and go back “to see the stars again”. In the message from Gino Sorbillo, a well-known pizza chef from Naples, four-leaf clovers and hearts abounded. “I need it”, Di Battista’s reply, with a promise, “I’ll come and see you soon”, accompanied by a photo of a tray with a plate of chicken and rice, probably his hospital meal.
The phone call with the Foreign Minister
The M5s community is apprehensive, Giuseppe Conte has been engaged for hours in a triangulation between the ex-MP’s family and the Farnesina. From Giorgia Meloni on down, the government is carefully following developments, first and foremost with the ambassador to Cuba Simona De Martino. And in the executive there is displeasure at the controversy, particularly on social media, after the news of the state flight made available. Antonio Tajani telephoned Di Battista and found him “combative in tone, not weakened in morale despite the complicated situation”.
The Foreign Minister, they explain to the Farnesina, expressed his solidarity with the former parliamentarian, guaranteeing him that the government will do “everything that is needed for him as must be done for every Italian citizen in similar conditions”, and wishing him to return to Rome soon. The deputy prime minister, recalling his past as a journalist, asked him what he was focusing on in his reports in Cuba. Di Battista spoke to him at length about the island and the complicated conditions it finds itself in, underlining the need to help the Cuban people.
The phone call ended with Tajani’s hope to see each other again soon, “to go back to arguing about everything but solidarity between Italians and the paths to peace that we must build.”
Lucan’s concern
The mayor of Riace and MEP for Avs, Mimmo Lucano, expresses in a note his “affection” and his “concern” for Alessandro Di Battista. «Warm wishes for a speedy recovery – states Lucano – to dear Alessandro Di Battista and deep sympathy to his family. Knowing of his illness saddens me, but I am confident. Because, like me, Alessandro is a badass. I am sure that his fighting spirit will prevail, as when he takes the side of the oppressed, when he denounces the Palestinian genocide, when he sets off to the borders of a world under siege to denounce its horror.” «I hope with all my heart that he recovers as soon as possible and returns home to his loved ones. The country still needs his voice, his courage, to cross the world with his eyes. The welcoming Riace gathers all around him”, concludes Lucano.