«We have entered the dramatic era of knives and weapons, which enter healthcare facilities undisturbed, with brutal and unbridled attacks unleashing terror in emergency rooms and hospital wards without any obstacle.
The latest case in Cittadella, with a psychiatric patient who stabs healthcare workers and police officers, represents yet another demonstration that the current measures are truly ineffective.
The attack on the nurse in Meldola, Forlì, a few days ago, seriously injured in the neck and hands with a cutting weapon, as well as the hammerings on the ambulance workers in Vallo della Lucania and the recent bites suffered by emergency workers 118 in Florence, paint a frightening picture to say the least.
Not to mention hospitals like San Leonardo in Castellammare, with an abnormal catchment area, where there is no day in which tensions do not explode in the emergency room and where, incredibly, there is no 24-hour staff of officers.
This was stated by Antonio De Palma, National President of Nursing Up.
«Health facilities have become a free port where danger is the order of the day. Punitive measures and arrests in flagrante delicto are not enough to avoid this debacle: they are only palliatives, smoke and mirrors for the community.
We need an immediate and radical change of direction”, continues De Palma.
“It is not acceptable that city hospitals, especially those with large flows of patients, lack the constant presence of the police, who can act as a deterrent from the first signs of anger and frustration of patients and their relatives.”
«It’s time to relaunch a concrete plan for security by the Interior Ministry, with a factual increase in law enforcement presences in the structures most at risk, and if the problem is the lack of personnel, then let’s call on the army! What more do you expect?”.
“Health workers, at present, risk their lives every day: ineffective words and measures must leave room for concrete and lasting actions”, concludes De Palma.
