It is not the art of recycling applied to orthopaedics, as the image of a cardboard acting as a cast for a fractured leg might suggest, rather a surrender of the health service to the chronic lack of resources in hospitals. Exasperating the art of making do, the doctors of Baron Romeo of Patti, in the Messina area, did their best with what they had at their disposal: immobilizing a leg with a fractured fibula using packaging cardboard, because of splints for the plaster cast there was no trace in the emergency room. The injured person is a young man who has adapted to the situation, finding himself with his right leg packaged like a Christmas gift. But the father considered that “package” a little too audacious, so much so that he posted a photo on Facebook, asking the president of the Region and the Sicilian deputies to be accountable and right: “How can you leave an emergency room in these conditions? “.
The parent is not angry with the doctors, who are often forced to work exhausting shifts and without having the minimum support to deal with emergencies, but with those who do not ensure that things work. “I would really like – he tells the Gazzetta del Sud, which reported the news – to give the president of the Region or the councilor the cardboard with which my son’s leg was splinted”. The Patti prosecutor’s office wants to see clearly and, in the meantime, has opened a model 45 file: acts not constituting a crime. Elia Natoli, 30 years old, was in a car accident last Saturday. In San Piero Patti, his town, the medical guard cleaned his wounds and sent him to Baron Romeo.
“In the car with my father – he says – and with atrocious pain in my foot, I arrived at the aid station where I waited from 6pm to 1am. The x-ray confirmed that the fibula had broken, but when the doctor went to look for the splints , found out they were finished.” Hence the idea of the cardboard. The young man was supposed to return to Patti hospital two days later for a check-up, “but I preferred to go to Messina to a private center where they put me in a cast. Of course, it cost me 200 euros”, he says.
Meanwhile, Schifani asked the Health Councilor, Giovanna Volo, to immediately start an inspection”, defining the affair as “unacceptable. Whoever made a mistake must pay”. The councillor, after having consulted the leaders of the Messina health authority, warned the offices to “proceed with the utmost urgency with an inspection”. For the M5S, what happened “is the emblem of Third World healthcare”, while Cateno De Luca, leader of the South calls North, asks for Schifani’s resignation and the regional secretary of the Democratic Party Anthony Barbagallo speaks of “healthcare in disarray”.
In the hospital lacks splints, the fracture is blocked with cardboard
