Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
If you have money you get treatment, if you are poor you wait for the disease to run its course. There is a Sicilian healthcare sector that has been in the eye of the storm for some time now. It is Pathological Anatomy, an irreplaceable compass for the therapeutic paths of cancer patients. Diagnosis, surgical interventions, chemotherapy and prognosis depend on histological and cytological reports. In this sector, the time factor is not a bureaucratic variable: compliance with reporting deadlines (the so-called TAT, Turnaround Time) represents the dramatic and thin border line that separates life from death. And Messina is not doing well at all, as Uil points out.
The complaint by Uil and the provincial Uil FP lifts the veil on a situation defined as “absurd, shameful and mortifying”. In the metropolitan city which historically boasts health and university excellence, public activity has been progressively emptied. To date, the only Operational Unit that continues to guarantee analyzes and services also for external users, as well as for the ASP facilities, is that of the Taormina hospital. A lonely outpost, forced to take on an unsustainable and constantly increasing amount of work. “The Messina companies send the biological samples to other provinces, up to Caltagirone. A hateful injustice that forces the less well-off to wait for times incompatible with life”
The desert map and the “traveling slides”
The rest of the territory is desert. According to what was reported by the unions, the other large Messina healthcare companies – the AO Papardo, the Irccs Neurolesi and the AOU Policlinico “G. Martino” – have progressively suspended activities for external patients. The solution found by managers? Sending biological samples and tissues out of the province, covering kilometers to facilities in other cities, even Caltagirone. A choice that involves very serious risks linked to the timing of delivery of the reports, as well as obvious and unjustified economic, logistical and organizational burdens. “The result of this disaster caused by wicked choices is there for all to see”, thunder Ivan Tripodi, general secretary of Uil Messina, and Livio Andronico, general secretary of Uil FP Messina. “Patients who have the economic means are forced to turn to private facilities to obtain diagnostic answers in acceptable times. All the others, the less well-off citizens, are condemned to wait biblical times, completely incompatible with the urgency of life-saving treatments.”
The suspicion of privatization
Behind what might seem like an organizational failure, the unions glimpse a precise and extremely nefarious political plan: “The aim is the demolition of public healthcare and the creeping and progressive privatisation, in which the private sector risks becoming structurally substituted for the public service”.
Empty seats and internal fighting
What makes the picture even more surreal is the total chaos in which the top management of the Messina healthcare companies find themselves. A generalized laxity that is blocking even urgent competition procedures for staff coverage. The reason? There is a lack of top managers, while behind the scenes there is internal fighting for positions. For over four months the Polyclinic has been without a General Director, Papardo has lacked a Medical Director and at Irccs Neurolesi the Administrative Director’s account is empty. The absence of strategic guides inevitably translates into administrative paralysis, contraction of services and absence of any future vision.
The request for inspection to the Department
Tripodi and Andronico ask for immediate and stringent intervention by the Regional Health Department. The request is clear: to urgently restore Pathological Anatomy in all Messina facilities and send inspectors to shed light on the real numbers of the disaster. It will be essential to quantify how many tests have been outsourced, what costs are burdened on public coffers, the actual waiting times for patients and the real shortages of doctors, technicians and administrators. Uil and Uil FP have announced that they will not passively assist in this dismantling and that they will start an all-out permanent mobilization. The objective is to save the constitutional right to health in Messina, guaranteeing dignified care and restoring centrality to the public service and its workers. Because you can’t make money or politics on the skin of cancer patients.