200 km from home and after months an eye examination for an elderly Sardinian woman with heart disease and diabetes

Anna Zucca lives in Quartu. She is 80 years old, has a heart attack and diabetes. She needs to have an eye exam, which would allow her to start a path that could alleviate her suffering . It's called "retinal tomography". There is availability: November 8th this year, in Alghero. Or the 13th of the same month, but in 2024, in Nuoro. The alternative: go for a fee. But the cost is 100 euros: «A quarter of my pension», she writes bitterly in an email sent to our editorial staff.

It was her daughter who typed on the headboard, explains the old woman, "but on the basis of my considerations", it is specified. Here is the text of the heartfelt appeal of a Sardinian woman asking for help.

I am writing this because I have no other means to express my regret and frustration in relation to the situation in which I found myself today for the sole need to book a diagnostic treatment, preliminary to carrying out a therapy which should allow me to alleviate my diabetic retinopathy and therefore improve my health conditions, allowing me to recover some of the sight that I risk losing.

I am 80 years old and, although I am still independent, I have a heart disease and, as mentioned, a diabetic. Even doing the simplest tasks often tires me.

However, I feel the need to bring to all of you what has happened to me, for the sole desire to alleviate my health conditions.

I am writing to the Councillor, who is competent in the matter, to the Honorable Cappellacci, who is always sensitive to the problems of his land, and to all the others because I think they can contribute to doing something to address and resolve these problems.

So, back to us. The doctor, following previous tests, gives me a new prescription for a "retinal tomography".

The prescription allows you to access the CUP for booking the treatment. This is the result.

The operation is only available in Alghero and Nuoro, but I live in Quartu SE in the province of Cagliari, I am 80 years old, I have a heart disease and diabetes. Obviously I don't drive anymore, but even if someone accompanied me it would be extremely tiring for me. Is it possible there are no other possibilities? It will be a mistake. My daughter calls the booking center on the phone and they confirm what was already clear from the cup web.

In the meantime, my daughter also called a well-known specialist facility that provides services under an agreement (the Vista Centre), but for this specific treatment it does not accept bookings under an agreement, but only for a fee (for inexplicable reasons).

I call the ASL URP (after a few rounds to understand who was responsible), they tell me that they will try to find out and if necessary they will call me back (if they find someone who provides the service under the agreement). Otherwise, they tell me, it is necessary to make a reservation with a private person for a fee: it involves an assessment that costs over €100. Practically a quarter of my pension . Yet it seemed to me that the art. 32 of the Italian Constitution guaranteed the right to health (for reminder: The Republic protects health as a fundamental right of the individual and interest of the community, and guarantees free treatment to the indigent.)

I would like to understand how all this can be reconciled with the impossibility of carrying out necessary treatments (and we are not talking about waiting in this case, we are talking about the fact that the treatment cannot be booked).

I ask you. If you can, explain to me whether you are only entitled to health treatments if you have adequate resources and whether, otherwise, you could also go blind because you cannot pay for the treatments.

(Unioneonline/E.Fr.)