Sardinia's healthcare system is collapsing, with emergency rooms and general practitioners in chaos.
At the Policlinico and the Santissima Trinità hospitals, dozens of patients are waiting for hospitalization.
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"It's a catastrophe," says Wolfgang Orecchioni, head of the emergency room at the Monserrato hospital.
"We currently have 34 patients waiting for admission," he explains. The situation is the same as yesterday late morning, and as the hours passed, it worsened even further. By mid-evening, the monitoring app recorded an 18-hour wait for white codes and 15 hours for green ones.
There is an emergency in the island's emergency rooms, the doctors (those who are able to work) are on the brink of collapse, there are serious staff shortages, and a huge shortage of nurses.
"Every day that passes it gets worse. The flu isn't the cause of this overcrowding; the flu is normal during this time," Orecchioni continues.
Roberto Massazza, director of the Local Health Authority (ASL 8), made the same exact observations : "We're desperate. In the Santissima Trinità emergency room, we always have 15 to 20 patients waiting in line for admission because there are no free beds. It's a disaster."
Carlo Piredda, a general practitioner and regional secretary of the SIMG union, agrees: "We hear every day about emergency rooms being overrun, but no one talks about the overload of general practitioners' offices."
The full article by Cristina Cossu in L'Unione Sarda, available on newsstands and the App today.
