Ambulance fined for speeding, Balzanelli (Sis118): “Serious lack of respect”

2023-10-26 16:14:47

Fines for speeding ambulances, like those for overwork during the Covid pandemic, “are a serious lack of respect towards healthcare workers and their work”. Thus Mario Balzanelli, president of Sis118, commenting to time.news Salute on the ambulance report that transported a woman in serious condition to Cardarelli in Naples, attacked by her neighbor. A paradoxical case but, unfortunately, not an isolated one.

“Incidents of this kind should never happen again – he underlines – also because, if the need for verification is identified, the police authorities can, at any time, and for any case, verify in real time at the 118 Operations Center territorially competent if the vehicle reported is actually used in a highly clinically critical rescue operation”.

Instead, Balzanelli notes with anger and bitterness, “we are witnessing more and more, almost daily, paradoxical and grotesque institutional oversights, completely regardless of the importance of the territorial and hospital emergency system. Oversights detrimental to the tranquility of the operators who, in a commendable way, they dedicate themselves to it, considering that tranquility during service is an indispensable requirement which should instead be protected when the high time-dependent complexity of our interventions requires us to give our best to snatch lives from death: when someone is about to die not we can and must not worry about getting fines because we are too quick to do everything to guarantee, as per our primary duty, the highest chances of survival. It is necessary to clarify, on a legal and regulatory level, to protect everyone’s life and of the community and, therefore, of the operations of 118 and its operators. Even with this in mind, we ask for the support of the Government and the legislator”.