Franco Corbelli
The regional health department "has sent a circular letter to family doctors inviting them to reduce by 30% the prescriptions of a category of drugs that are absolutely essential to control blood pressure and avoid heart attacks and strokes". This was stated by the president of the Civil Rights movement, Franco Corbelli, who asked the president of the Region and Calabrian health commissioner, Giuseppe Scopelliti, to "intervene and immediately revoke the circular delivered by the councillorship". "What one of the many general practitioners reported to Civil Rights - Corbelli argued - is a very serious, absurd fact, so improbable that I had difficulty believing it was true. It is an act that could also constitute hypotheses of criminal relevance which certainly represents an unacceptable limitation on the patients' right to assistance. Sending a circular to general practitioners asking them to reduce the prescription of a category of antihypertensive drugs by 30% is a fact of unprecedented gravity, something that has precedents, which unfortunately demonstrates the drama, the defeat, the drift of Calabrian health". "Who signed this circular - concluded Corbelli - sent by e-mail to general practitioners? Is the President Scopelliti and Calabrian health commissioner aware of this very serious act? Was he informed in advance? Did he authorize this circular contrary to the law, as it violates the fundamental principle of the right to health care?". (ANSA January 10, 2011).
