«Five years is amply sufficient time to reverse course and change the fate of Calabrian healthcare. Yet nothing has changed.” The parliamentarian of the 5 Star Movement, Riccardo Tucci, declared this in a note, attacking the management of Roberto Occhiuto. «Indeed, if Roberto Occhiuto should be recognized for anything, it is that he succeeded in making the worst possible worse: the latest report from the Gimbe Foundation clearly certifies this, placing Calabria in last place in Italy for the provision of Essential Levels of Assistance (LEA), with a territorial and district healthcare system that has sunk below every threshold of dignity».
The complaint on medical emigration
«In this merciless scenario – continues the M5S deputy – faced with a 20 percent drop in family doctors and a shortage of paediatricians and nurses, the only item that continues to grow at a rapid pace is that of healthcare emigration. In order to be able to receive treatment, Calabrian citizens continue to face long journeys of hope to hospitals in the North, taking on enormous personal and economic sacrifices. A plague that causes a drain on regional coffers of the order of 327 million per year for reimbursements of medical services.”
Waiting lists and giving up treatment
«To all this – continues the 5 Star exponent – are added the endless waiting lists: a dramatic situation whose only “ways out” are the use of private services, for those who can afford it, or the total renunciation of treatment. The latter is a problem that affects 180 thousand Calabrians, 10 percent of the population.”
«In light of this disaster – concludes Tucci – Occhiuto would do well to draw the necessary consequences by freeing Calabria from its failed management, so as to be able to dedicate himself full time to his editorial activities and to the secretariat of Forza Italia».