"Today I have to say goodbye to a friend, who like all of us family doctors was discharged from the institutions and died alone. His death for the bureaucracy is not worth the cost of a mask. We are ready to close the studies that are not part of the Essential Levels of Assistance ". The secretary of the Federation of Family Physicians (Fimmg) Silvestro Scotti writes that the failure to report a technical amendment has blocked the possibility for general practitioners to have the supply of protective devices to deal with the epidemic from Covid- 19. Scotti's intervention comes after the umpteenth death of an infected family doctor.
"The deceased colleague is Giovanni Battista Tommasino, born in 1959, from Castellammare di Stabia", reports the secretary of Fimmg stressing that the amendment to Cura Italia aimed to clarify that the supply of personal protective equipment had to be extended to medical doctors general, to free-choice pediatricians and pharmacists. "Fimmg - writes Scotti in a note - considers the decision of the State Accounting unacceptable". And he explains that yesterday the negative opinion came to amendment 5.1 at first signing Paola Boldrini (Pd), to the Cura Italia decree, deposited in the Senate Budget Committee. An amendment that Fimmg strongly wanted: "The text aimed to clarify that the supply of personal protective equipment had to be extended to general practitioners, free-choice pediatricians and pharmacists.
Professionals up to now, and at this point also tomorrow, left in the limbo of the administrative interpretations which, seeing them as self-employed, must provide these supplies autonomously ". Impossible. "But as far as we learn - reports Scotti - the Accounting Department, in postponing the opinion of the Ministry of Health, expressed itself in the opposite way for the lack of a technical report useful for quantifying the financial charges produced by this modification".
"I wonder - he says - how much a doctor's life is worth to the state". "Without tools - he continues - the pandemic is not addressed, and the situation will worsen if and when the containments are loosened. Everything will fall precisely on primary care, where the infection can resume its course and create new outbreaks". Finally, Scotti announces the decision to proceed with a request to the Guarantor to "close the family doctors' studies, which are not part of the essential levels of assistance. We are not willing to count our dead by keeping quiet".