The mayor of a small Italian village has decreed that no one is allowed to get sick. Not now, not ever again. But he’s not some despotic, iron-fisted leader whose citizens will just have to endure his rants and ravings until he dies of old age. He’s making a joke, and a fairly poignant one at that, mocking the dire state of the local healthcare system.
Antonio Torchia is the mayor of Belcastro, a tiny village in the southern region of Calabria with a population of only around 1,200. He has instructed the town’s residents, many of whom are elderly, to avoid doing anything that could result in a medical emergency, like playing sports or even just leaving the house too often.
Torchia’s “obviously humorous provocation” (his own words) is based on a fairly serious issue of healthcare coverage in Italy’s southern regions, the poorest and most sparsely populated area in the nation. A perfect storm of mafia interference and political mismanagement has hindered its healthcare system. It got so bad that the region was put under special administration from the central government around 15 years ago.
All of that came to a head when COVID-19 hit Italy especially hard, overflowing its hospitals and putting a major strain on the entire nation’s healthcare system.
The 2008 financial crisis marked the beginning of austerity measures that brought deep cuts to the Italian national healthcare system. Many Italian citizens lack access to medical care. For the residents of Belcastro, for instance, the nearest emergency healthcare center is nearly 30 miles away.
Eighteen hospitals have closed in the region since 2009. The remaining hospitals have accumulated so much debt that they can hardly afford to pay for medical supplies and personnel. The village does have an on-call doctor, but he is unavailable on weekends and holidays.
To help alleviate some of the region’s medical woes, back in 2022, Cuba sent over 497 doctors to work in various medical facilities in Calabria. Regional governor Roberto Occhituo said that they helped “save” Calabria’s hospitals. The mayor says his joke was meant to do the right thing in “shining a light on the issue” to “shake consciences.”
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