Hope and Covid, death from heart attack in 2020 has tripled
Article for Affaritaliani.it by Marcello Gemmato, head of the Health Department of the Brothers of Italy
It is news yesterday that the emergency commissioner, Francesco Son, asked the Regions and the Autonomous Provinces for the massive use of resources for the continuation of the campaign vaccinal, especially to reach the minimum target of 4.6 million doses by 12 December.
I state that already the news of the 1.8 billion increase in the national health fund to be used for treatment COVID was welcomed by the Brothers of Italy, because in the 10 years before Covid (when the center-right was not in government) the public national health system 37 billion euros were subtracted (source GIMBE), and the enormous number of deaths, the incidence in terms of mortality and lethality linked to the corona virus, was unfortunately the result of this destructuring of public health care.
The point, however, is another: in Italy and in the world, ordinary diseases continue, despite COVID, to persist and continue to dying of cancer, cardiovascular disease, of metabolic diseases. I would not like Minister Speranza to have forgotten all this.
At what point are the screening of diseases such as breast cancer, whose early diagnosis leads to success in more than 80% of detected cases? At what point is fecal occult blood screening deadly for the early diagnosis of colorectal cancer? In a word: what happened to preventive medicine that over the years has led to significantly lowering the mortality of diseases that until recently were imagined as incurable?
According to Agenas (national health agency of the regions) in 2020, during the first phase of the pandemic, there were 1.1 million fewer hospitalizations in hospitals and in the first nine months of 2020, 52 million visits were lost specialist and diagnostic services: that is 30% less, millions of Italians have not been to the cardiologist, the gynecologist, the neurologist, they have not done resonances, ultrasounds, CT scans, preventive diagnostic analyzes. We are faced with dramatic data, and the Italian Society of Cardiology (SIC) notes that in Italy mortality from heart attack in 2020 has tripled.
The Italian federation of voluntary associations in oncology reports that we have witnessed the postponement of 99% of operations for breast cancer, 99.5% of prostate operations, 74% of colorectal operations, however, noting that the cancer plan is still in 2011.
I’ll stop here but we could go on; in this context, what does our Minister of Health do? Continue one way to deal with COVID: we remind Speranza that he is not a minister of COVID but of the Health of the Italians; perhaps he has forgotten it.
I would not like yesterday’s appeal Son materializes in a further subtraction of professional and material resources from other pathologies, I therefore expect the government to monitor and pay attention to all pathologies and, in a few months, tell the Italians how many deaths from cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic problems, there have been due to the one-way choices made so far.
#Hope #speaks #Covid #numbers #deaths #diseases