Parties, clans and bureaucracy, all assaulting the health banquet. A bottomless pit worth three billion euros a year. Discovering an Italian disease: between lager clinics and useless hospitals, a journey to the Asl of shame where you kill for a nomination and you can die from appendicitis - In a single structure, that of Vibo, the Nas have ascertained 803 infringements
Let's start with the misfortune of Flavio in this report on Calabrian hospital obscenities, one of many, one of those that makes all the others survive who suck 65 percent of the Region's budget from Healthcare. Flavio Scutellà, twelve years old, died on 25 October 2007 in the midst of seven hospitals in the Piana di Gioia di Tauro that couldn't cure him, seven useless hospitals wanted by local squires or by the "sottopanza" of some minister on duty. Flavio hits his head on the pavement and due to a small hematoma - which gets bigger and bigger hour after hour - he doesn't find an emergency room or an ambulance or an operating room in those seven hospitals. Palms. Polistena. Rosarno. Taurianova. Oppius Mamertine. Joy Taurus. Novigrad. Fake hospitals. Flavio left after four days of agony and maybe at that moment, somewhere in Calabria, someone was already fantasizing about the four new hospitals that will be built with an emergency decree from the Civil Protection. There are already 42 of them. And 38 are private clinics. In the filthy Calabrian suburbs, hospitals open as do hypermarkets and industrial warehouses.
Procurement. Partitions. Passage of suitcases full of banknotes. Threats. In every ASL there is a shot in the barrel. In the old hospital in Vibo people died of appendicitis, a tonsillar abscess, bronchopneumonia. Twelve cases in the last eighteen months. Half a dozen inquiries that cross each other. And 803 the "infractions" already ascertained by the Nas carabinieri. The new hospital will not be there for many more years due to bribes.
"The Vibo company is Tassone´s company, do you understand?" Santo Garofalo, general manager of ASL 8, said on the telephone.
And the director general of ASL 8 explained with astonishing normality what the "rules" were in that province: "Don't forget, Vibo belongs to Tassone and not to Ranieli or to those others or to Stillitani. The three companies: one from Galati, one from Tassone and the other from Trematerra». Phone calls from just two years ago. Mario Tassone is a UDC member of parliament. Like Pino Galati. Like Gino Trematerra. Michele Ranieli is a former member of the Chamber. Francesco Stillitani was regional councilor at the time. They are also from the UDC.
It is the UDC that was the owner and perhaps still is the owner of the ASL of Vibo Valentia The map of the health power of Calabria is visible to everyone, practically official, obvious in its effrontery.
There are no heads of health heads as in Sicily, a Totò Cuffaro in the west and a Raffaele Lombardo in the east. The domain is pulverized, bartered, very transversal. In Cosenza the Gentiles are in charge, Nino who is a deputy and Pino who is a regional councilor, both of Forza Italia, a family dedicated to health. But they are not alone. Nicola Adamo, regional leader of the Democratic Party and former vice president of the Loiero council, also has a certain influence. In Cosenza there is also Ennio Morrone, a member of the Udeur with interests also n
