“The 118 is on its knees, exhausted. There is no more time. The territorial emergency system is a priority in health planning, which cannot fail to consider its centrality and ability to respond immediately and appropriately to health needs of 60 million citizens. the world of acute cases and the territorial emergency, which has received nothing in 30 years”. This was underlined to time.news Salute by Mario Balzanelli, president of Sis 118, who raised the alarm on the conditions of the territorial emergency-urgency and asked for urgent intervention from the Government: “I had an interlocution with Undersecretary Gemmato and we will ask shortly a meeting with the Minister of Health Schillaci “.
“In the last 30 years – recalls Balzanelli – the 118 has been weakened, disjointed, destroyed. Operations centers have been closed without reason, mistaking them for call centers, an assistance to software supplier companies. And there is a lack of doctors and operators”. The course has not reversed even with the health emergency.
“In the midst of the Covid pandemic we were the heroes and angels of the street, people sang and applauded from the balconies when ambulances passed. Yet rewarding and incentive allowances were only recognized for doctors and nurses in the emergency room, forgetting the medical staff and nurses, drivers and rescuers of the national 118 system – remarked Balzanelli – The institutions no longer call us the ‘front line’ but the ‘zero line’, because zero is the consideration they have of us and our work. they don’t call Santa Claus or the witch but 118: we are the ones who rush to save the life of you or your loved ones.
“The operators of the 118 have very high risk profiles in carrying out their work, even losing their lives. Theirs is a strenuous job and must be recognized as such, but unfortunately it is not yet. The previous government has provided incentives to emergency room doctors and nurses completely forgetting the 118 doctors, nurses and even rescuer drivers, who carry out a much more strenuous job than hospitals, in any weather condition and in high-risk environments. , descend into escarpments, lower themselves with winches from the helicopter or race against time on wet roads, risking their lives at every turn”, remarked Balzanelli recalling the serious accident which recently cost the life of the rescuer driving of an ambulance crushed by a truck on the road between Ancona and Falconara. “Events that must never happen again – he adds – The environmental and biological risk profile of the 118 operators must be taken into consideration”. The doctors, Balzanelli comments, “are abandoning the agreement because it is underpaid in an extremely stressful, strenuous and even dangerous context of service”.
For Balzanelli, the measure is full.” This colossal ‘oversight’ in the health planning of all the governments of the last 30 years, which have not given any response to this system – he continues – Proof of this is that the national emergency system is on their knees, the territorial and hospital ones. We have totally forgotten the extraordinary work that 118 operators from all over the country strenuously do, despite the fact that they represent the face and substance of a health system that always responds, with immediacy and quality The answer to them, however, is the absence of any government document and appropriations: over 30 billion have been allocated to health care by the last 3 governments and 118 has never even been named. A very bitter paradox”.
In the Pnrrr, Balzanelli finally notes, “a system of strengthening territorial health care has been designed that does not take the 118 into any consideration: I ask the Government how a reform of territorial medicine can be technically conceived without thinking of the reform of the emergency system- urgency that is territorial. The 118 must be valorised, it must be financed so that it is able to respond with greater appropriateness and speed to a workload that is growing exponentially. Any acute problem of the citizen, including minor ones, affects the 118, but 118 cannot be used to fill the abysmal gaps in the hospital system, first aid in primis”.