Elements of "very significant critical issues in the process of taking charge and managing" patients of developmental age with dysphoria or gender incongruence at the Careggi hospital in Florence. Above all, the crux of the neuropsychiatric path and the use of pharmacological therapy with triptorelin, the active ingredient which, by lowering the production of sexual hormones, blocks pubertal development.
These are some of the contents of the report of the inspection commission of the Ministry of Health which, in an audit on 23 and 24 January of the clinical staff and management, received documents on the 85 cases treated in Careggi in recent years. Now the Tuscany Region is required to adapt. And a political clash also breaks out.
The results of the ministerial investigation are summarized in the response of the minister Orazio Schillaci to the parliamentary question presented by the Forzista senator Maurizio Gasparri.
The document also reveals the start of an investigation by the Florence prosecutor's office on the basis of a complaint. In this sense, Schillaci, who addressed "an invitation to the Tuscany Region to implement, within a defined deadline, a series of corrective actions", sent the inspectors' report to the Florence prosecutor Filippo Spiezia, and requested authorization , to share an extract with the Tuscany Region, to Spiezia himself, "who, on the basis of a complaint formulated by an interested third party, had started an independent investigation into the same problem".
The text was illustrated in Florence by Gasparri himself today to the press in an initiative by Forza Italia for membership. "Careggi violated the rules", he told reporters, underlining that "it is good that the government has decided to return to the triptorelin issue to review the guidelines a little, because a 10-year-old child who can make irreversible decisions about his orientations, on one's physical nature, must have assistance before starting an administration that then changes one's life forever".
The reaction of the Tuscany Region is opposite, complaining that it is not yet in possession of the Commission's report: "When it is made available to us we will do an in-depth analysis and respond to the ministry", say the governor Eugenio Giani and the councilor Simone Bezzini. But the ministry, in a note released in the evening and signed by the general director of health planning, Americo Cicchetti, made it known that the report was sent to the Region already last Wednesday "by registered mail and confidential protocol" and that "there is no There was no violation of institutional practice."
"Do not campaign on people's skin", attacks the health manager of the Tuscany Democratic Party Marco Niccolai. "Shame on him, he is a truly ridiculous character", Gasparri immediately replies, while the FI regional coordinator Marco Stella asks for Bezzini's resignation, and Pro Vita to ban triptorelin to block puberty. For Cinzia, mother of a transgender daughter and founder of an association that supports trans kids, Schillaci's response "is a bit cryptic" and she is waiting to learn more in detail the results of the report on Careggi: "But it's worth it continue this service, because it remains an excellence," he said.
More in detail, the critical issues identified concern "the incorrect transposition of AIFA resolution no. 21756/2019 - we read - with particular regard to the obligation to necessarily require psychiatric support for starting treatment with triptorelin", the failure to transmit of the data to AIFA, and "to further critical issues, also of an organizational nature, regarding the role of the child neuropsychiatrist in the process of taking charge and managing the patient".
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