Guaranteeing all children the right to pediatric care up to the age of 18 both on the territory and in hospitals, without differences linked to the Region in which they were born and live, as is already the case in other countries such as France, Great Britain, Holland, Poland and Sweden.
This is the request that comes from the States General of Pediatrics, summoned today to the Ministry of Health by the Italian Society of Pediatrics.
Although according to WHO and Italian law, childhood includes every person under 18 years of age, the right to pediatric care in our country stops "unnaturally" for pediatricians at 14 years of age.
After this age, in fact, children can no longer be followed up by the paediatrician of their choice, but end up in the care of the adult doctor (with the exception of children with chronic pathologies who remain in the care of paediatricians up to the age of 16). .
The situation of hospital assistance is more complicated, for which the situation differs from Region to Region and even within the same Region.
"With the consequence that over 25% of children between 0-17 years, 1 out of 4, is hospitalized in adult wards" as underlined by the president of Sip Annamaria Staiano, and about
85% of patients aged between 15 and 17 are managed in conditions of promiscuity with adult and elderly patients and by personnel not specialized in assisting subjects in their developmental age.
A situation that particularly concerns intensive care.
Pediatric ones are few and badly distributed: just 26 in all of Italy, with only 202 beds and an average of 3 beds per 1 million inhabitants against 8 in Europe.
So many pediatric patients are hospitalized in intensive care for adults.
"All of this is unacceptable. As paediatricians we defend the pediatric specificity, i.e. the right of children and adolescents to be treated in environments dedicated to them and by personnel specifically trained for the developmental age", adds Staiano.
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The legislator should intervene - concludes Giovanni Corsello, of the University of Palermo -.
We ask to guarantee the raising of the pediatric age to 18 years in the hospital in the area in the Essential Levels of Assistance Services (LEP).