“Don’t have the Covid vaccine? You can’t do an internship in a hospital. Ergo, you can’t graduate“. Azione Universitaria (Au) has denounced the problem on social media, pointing the finger at “a regional law that” in Puglia “it would allow individual local health authorities to force students to get vaccinated if they deemed it appropriate (on the basis of who knows what). It’s a shame that almost everywhere in the rest of Italy this vaccine is no longer required for internships,” the right-wing association writes. “For this controversial decision – it specifies – requests for clarification have arrived from the Privacy Guarantor.”
“An even more paradoxical problem”, observes Azione Universitaria, “if we consider that doctors, nurses and in general the members of the healthcare staff have already been reintroduced to work in the facility even without any dose of vaccine already at the end of 2022 and continue to do so today. So why – asks Au – is a student who only needs to gain work experience and understand how hospital mechanisms work hindered by exclusively political blackmail? In this regard – reports the association – when we obtained the interview with the rector” of the University of Salento “and with the general director” of the ASL of Lecce, “we proposed as a solution the creation of an agreement with other healthcare facilities (including private ones, where the vaccine is not required) alternatives to the Fazzi”, a university hospital in Lecce, “to be able to carry out the internship. The proposal was immediately rejected without further explanation”, claims Au. “Speaking instead with the ASL – he adds – we are told that there is a regional law” that allows healthcare companies to provide for mandatory vaccination for students.
“As usual, Puglia and the Emiliano administration must know how to distinguish themselves”, protests the association that refers in particular to the case of Martina Mitrugno, a student whose story is making the rounds in the local press. The young woman, “21 years old – we read in the ‘Corriere del Mezzogiorno’ – would be ready to enroll in the third year of Nursing in September, but she will not be able to attend the mandatory internship for her course of study. The cause is the lack of vaccines for the coronavirus. The girl, in fact – the newspaper reconstructs – decided from the beginning of the pandemic not to undergo any prophylaxis, agreeing for the first 2 years to undergo specific visits with a competent doctor who would guarantee her temporary authorization to attend the departments”. But “for the third year the procedure changed, effectively excluding her from the activity within the health facilities”. Au concludes: “As also stated in an article in ‘La Verità’, in which our Martina Mitrugno appeared, we ask that in 2024 a student no longer has to suffer the political blackmail of the anti-Covid vaccine and that he or she can graduate”.
Lopalco: “Nurses who don’t understand the role of vaccines should change jobs”
“A nurse who doesn’t understand the importance of vaccinations would be better off doing another job,” comments epidemiologist Pier Luigi Lopalco, professor of Hygiene at the University of Salento, to Adnkronos.
“Vaccinating healthcare workers should be an ethical obligation, even before an administrative one,” observes Lopalco. “Healthcare workers – explains the expert, a regional councilor for the Democratic Party – must be the first to get vaccinated for several reasons: to protect themselves and their patients; to avoid absenteeism during the epidemic season; to be an example for citizens. If a student of the healthcare professions does not understand this concept, it means that he has studied little and badly.”
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