«43 percent of Calabrian patients turn to healthcare facilities in non-bordering regions. Calabria remains the first region in Italy for healthcare migration while it is the last for current spending on healthcare and for the number of women who undergo cancer screening. This is the reality outlined by the latest Svimez report on the gaps between North and South in the right to health. A desolate picture that photographs the real situation of thousands of Calabrian patients, who are not guaranteed adequate access to treatment within the regional borders.” The regional councilor claims this in a press release Antonio Lo Schiavo, president of the Mixed Group – Freely Progressives, commenting on the latest Svimez Report “One country, two cures. The North-South gaps in the right to health”, presented in recent days in Rome in collaboration with Save the Children.
«It is true that even in Calabria there is no shortage of leading entities in the treatment of oncological pathologies, but at the same time it is clear that this is not yet sufficient to guarantee Calabrian citizens equal conditions and rights as happens in other regions. Last June I asked President Occhiuto an urgent question on the implementation of the regional oncology network, which remained largely on paper, focusing on the need to accelerate decision-making processes to fully implement the commissioner decrees that dictated its directions. From the response to that question, received days later, it was clear that the establishment of the Colon Cancer Units, the strengthening of the Breast Units, the implementation and strengthening of oncological screening and even the establishment of a dedicated toll-free number, were in serious and culpable delay. And to date, unfortunately, there has been no significant news regarding the issues brought to the attention of the President of the Region and Commissioner for Health. There is therefore still a lot of work to be done in order to hope to be able to influence the merciless data disclosed once again by Svimez which, as mentioned, see 43 percent of Calabrian patients migrating to other territories with the related increase in expenses for the regional budget. Resources that could instead be used in Calabria to improve and implement our oncology network. Instead, the health gap is widening more and more and will become definitively unbridgeable when the differentiated autonomy, desired by the rich regions of the North, establishes autonomous health systems that will become increasingly efficient in the advanced and increasingly disastrous regions where they are already in difficulty”.