“The 118 that always responds, immediately and to anyone, that always arrives wherever it is called by the desperate cries of those in need, as an unshakable protection of life, is the same 118 that disappears every time it is a question of receiving recognition, consideration and support from the State. What a bitter and undeserved paradox! Will the next Budget Law forget, once again, the 118?” Mario Balzanelli, national president of Sis118, asks this in view of the first meetings of the Government on the next law Budget Law, addressing the Executive, Parliament and politics.
“The 118 territorial emergency system, established by the State to protect the lives of 60 million people on a time-dependent basis, has been progressively weakened over the last 20 years and systematically ignored, for reasons that politics should explain to citizens – adds Balzanelli to Adnkronos Salute – by every Government and by every legislative provision that has provided for the allocation of resources in favor of healthcare. No legislative provision has ever valorized, in concrete terms, its operators, doctors, nurses, drivers-rescuers”, he underlines, recalling that “the PNRR does not allocate even one euro to 118 and does not even mention it. As if we did not exist. The same Ministerial Decree 77, which establishes the revolution of the new organizational model of territorial healthcare, does not take 118 into consideration. The Government has meritoriously rewarded emergency room doctors with specific allowances, while 118 doctors have not been taken into consideration at all. Here too, as if we didn’t exist.”
Instead, Balzanelli lists looking at the next Budget, “the fleet of emergency vehicles must be increased in all regions, so that they are in sufficient number to guarantee arrival times in critical scenarios consistent with the timing established by the legislator for urban and extra-urban areas. We must ensure adequate incentive contracts for personnel and recognize specific allowances for environmental and biological risk to doctors, nurses but also to drivers-rescuers, peculiar to the operational dimension of territorial emergency medicine. We must equip each 118 System with an advanced simulation center to guarantee the best possibilities for training and education, permanent and recurrent, of all operators”.
118 “deserves understanding, even before funding – Balzanelli clarifies – if you do not understand or, worse, if you pretend not to understand which indispensable health care facility you are referring to, you cannot be aware of what is needed to maintain an efficiency worthy of our culture and respectful of the principle of social solidarity which, for our Constitution, is a fundamental pillar. Even with the recent national tragedy of the pandemic, the 118 System has demonstrated its fundamental importance for the defense and safety of all citizens, and therefore of the State as a whole, operating on the front lines in a reality that we can define as hellish, often fighting in unarmed operating conditions, with high risks of contracting the infection, rescuing and saving countless human lives. The transition from forgotten to heroes and then back to ghosts was very rapid”.
“If it were well known what 118 operators do, it would be obvious to plan to equip the 118 Operations Centers with the caller geolocation function, giving citizens back the possibility of direct access so as not to waste precious time – he highlights – which we document continues to be significantly lost with the current organizational model of 112. It would be equally obvious to plan to equip the Operations Centers with the most advanced technology that allows them to connect, in real time, with the vehicles and rescue teams, and ensure that critical patients can benefit from the possibilities of clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic evaluation allowed by telemedicine”.
“We would like politics, which is a service to the community, to include all this. Otherwise it would not be politics. We ask ourselves, today more than ever, how politics can believe it is serving the community while completely forgetting, decade after decade, the Territorial Emergency Service 118, which saves the lives of the community every day”, concludes Balzanelli.
#appeal #budget #law #dont #forget
