Emotion in Naples: Simba died, the 3-year-old boy abandoned by his drug-addicted mother
The little “Simba”, abandoned by his mother at the age of 4 months and since then followed by the community “La Casa di Matteo” of Naples, died at the age of 3. Since he was born, the little boy suffered from withdrawal symptoms due to his mother’s addictions and had undergone two tracheotomies.
“We operators are convinced that we are prepared because we experience suffering every day. But the death of a 3-year-old child is unnatural and no matter how much you try to prepare yourself for the end, you never are,” Marco Caramanna, president of the association that had welcomed him, told Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno. The child was born with his brother “in a makeshift shack” and was taken to the hospital thanks to the intervention of a social worker. Once at the Santobono in Naples, her mother had gone away with an excuse and abandoned him. “The doctors discovered that the child had taken drugs through his mother’s milk,” said Caramanna, who recalled the long journey of the little one, renamed after the puppy from “The Lion King”.
Simba had been assisted for five months in the Neapolitan hospital and then transferred to the Bambino Gesù in Rome, where he was for another five months, always followed by the community. “Then he finally returned to our home and we looked after him until yesterday when a respiratory crisis, the umpteenth, took him away,” said Caramanna. “Without us, Simba would have gone through all this with no one around, in a hospital bed. We have been his family in recent years, we have not only looked after him in terms of health but also and above all from an emotional point of view ”, he continued.
“For example, Simba didn’t see and didn’t hear well and we had organized sensory activities to be able to stimulate him and make him aware of the surrounding world. When he fussed we could calm him down by picking him up. These are things that would not have happened in the hospital because the method and above all the numbers to manage are different ”.
The boy’s disappearance has not been easy for the community to deal with. “I was present yesterday, I participated in the resuscitation physically, and on an emotional level it was really very demanding. Also because we have other children in the facility and having to continue working was a bit surreal. While Simba was finished, other children needed me and I couldn’t help but look after them”.
Thanks to his story, social workers were able to save his brother, who now lives with the family that adopted him. According to Caramanna, those who work at the Casa di Matteo are neither heroes nor angels: “we are simply people who have humanity and who believe that one cannot turn away when faced with the pain of others, that one cannot pretend of nothing in the face of suffering. Many are frightened by suffering and pain, but we are frightened by the indifferent”.
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