PALERMO (ITALPRESS) – The 118 carried out 427,389 total interventions in Sicily in 2024. With a total of 252 stations, it has 364 vehicles and in Seus share can count on 3,030 employees. These are some of the main data that emerged during the conference “118. Perspectives of the emergency system,” which was held at the Norman Palace in Palermo. During the initiative, marking the 33rd anniversary of the establishment of the 118 territorial emergency service in Italy, regional organizational models and the views of scientific societies were discussed.
“We are, even with recent data, growing,” stressed Riccardo Castro, president of Seus 118. This shows how close 118, our much talked about emergency system, really is to the community, to the regional community. We are always ready to improve to make our system even more efficient, even more performing.”
The coming months will be crucial for further growth. “It will start with the big challenges,” Castro added. “First among them is digitization. Implementing and enhancing digital 118. Soon our region will have two data center modules, in Palermo and Catania, which will coordinate all the operations centers. Then another important challenge is telemedicine on which we clearly must insist. And finally, we will always insist on the project to spread in all places the culture of rescue, the ability to activate a call, and the importance of the driver-rescuer who must be protected against the shameful phenomenon of assaults. Strengthening the workforce? In synergy with the Department of Health, we are in the home stretch with regard to the tender that provides for the temporary recruitment of temporary rescuers in cases where there is a need.”
Also present was the Sicilian Region’s Health Councillor, Daniela Faraoni, who explained how “organization obviously is fundamental to the emergency-emergency service. Proximity medicine, action medicine, medicine closer to the citizen will of course be the main solution and in this solution obviously 118 will have to maintain an important position. Everything else will be taken care of by the territory, thanks also to the implementation then of another organizational component, which is 116-117, which will clearly make it possible to streamline the number of interventions made by emergency and instead concentrate activities on the capillarity of an organization for really serious and complex cases.”
On the same wavelength is Salvatore Iacolino, general manager of Strategic Planning at the Regional Health Department: “What has emerged is important data that qualifies an emergency system that works, is efficient and certainly can be improved by strengthening coordination between the four operating centers and the rest of the system of territorial and hospital health agencies. The technological infrastructure that will deliver a modern and absolutely efficient system is at an advanced stage.”
Also among the main actors at the meeting was FEU (Foundation for Emergency and Urgency) represented by its president Maurizio Menarini: “This is an important day, apart from the anniversary of the birth of 118, because we are in a particularly difficult moment in public health and emergency care. FEU Foundation was created to bring together the actors of the system, federate us and try to make ourselves heard more and more by the political side, which today has to make important decisions in a world that, alas, is in serious pain, but which we see with optimism for the future. Our demands are to value professionals, to give a uniform organizational model throughout Italy.”
– photo xd6/Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
