[ad_1]
Via dei Transiti is a narrow street in the Loreto district, which connects Viale Molise with Via Padova, similar to many others on the eastern outskirts of Milan. Here at number 28, in 1994, the People's Medical Center was opened, a self-managed center that provides essential services to those who remain outside the national health system: the homeless, for example, or foreigners without a residence permit. Most often threatened with expulsion, Surgery of these years has been occupied free of more than five thousand people. Housed in the premises of the T28 social center – occupied since 1975 – it is presented with a red sign where "People's Medical Center" is written in different languages. Inside, there is a waiting room and a doctor's office, where doctors – volunteers, such as nurses and those working at the reception – visit patients.
"It was an abandoned club in the social center, used for meetings," says Liliana, a teacher who helped found the center and who takes care of the reception, "so when we we decided to open the we renovated the clinic, according to the locals ".
Today, the popular medical clinic receives between twenty and thirty people per day, organizes information and awareness campaigns on the right to health and runs a counseling center. Those who work there do it for free, while the drugs come from donations. Luca, a native nurse from Como, who has been a volunteer at the clinic for more than eight years, says the management of this place is a political gesture: "We are not volunteers in the clbadic sense of the word." The goal is to protect the health of patients, but also to encourage them to become aware of their rights: "We want our self-management to be an example for those who come here, to push them to do something, to ask the rights they belong, and not just to solve his little problem. "
More and more Italians
On a Monday afternoon in May, the small waiting room is almost full.This is the day when patients are received long, while Thursday night is devoted to first visits.People are waiting quietly for their turn to meet the doctor.Many of them are strangers, but there are also Italians, like a woman who arrives and asks if it is possible to be included in the list of visits.
If in the past those who contacted the popular medical clinic were foreigners, today things change nt: "The Lupi decree on the urgency of housing prevents the residence of homeless persons or those illegally occupied by their residence. But without a residence, you can not ask for a primary care doctor, and in this situation, there are more and more Italians. So they come to us or go directly to hospitals, "says Liliana.
Meanwhile, in a corner, a volunteer asks questions to patients: "We ask what is their country of origin, their administrative situation and information about where they live," says Luca. Pbadports or ID cards are not requested. "The only documents we ask, we ask our doctors, and concern the recording," Liliana jokes.
Twenty-four years of history
The origins of the ambulatory are rooted in the world of the Milanese left and social movements. The two-year period 1993-1994 is significant for Italy and in particular for Milan which sees the election of the first (and only) mayor of the League, Marco Formentini, after an election campaign in which he took Is fiercely launched against "non-EU citizens". Worried, the Milan social movements decide to react: "In 1993, after a large badembly at the Elf Theater, the Milanese movement decided to give birth to two experiences: one never left, the other was the popular medical clinic, "recalls Liliana.
The center opened in June 1994 and immediately began to collaborate with the feminist collective, which authorized you ?, which has already gathered at the T28. "They worked on the right to terminate the pregnancy.I remember meetings with midwives who said:" I am in despair, the hospital tells me that the Romanian lady who wants to abort must pay one million and six hundred thousand lire, "says Liliana, so in 1994 La consultoria was born, self-managed by women only, fighting for the right to a conscious motherhood for foreign women, and in 1995 it also opened Telefono. viola, a standard for the victims of psychiatric discomfort, currently suspended.
The same year, Roberto Formigoni starts the long government as president of the Lombardy region and we start talking about a reform of health, made in 1997, which introduces individuals in public health Lombardy. "After reform Formigoni, public hospitals have become mere service providers, as they were companies." Lombardy anticipates what would have happened at the national level: the increasing role of individuals and the state money – less and less – mainly on the basis of services provided in hospitals, not with an overview.
To try to show that "another health care is possible", the activists and volunteers of the clinic immediately turn to foreigners, then completely forgotten by the national health system. In 1994, the Martelli Law on Immigration is still in force, which does not mention the right to health for them. The only way for a stranger to access an emergency room was to "find themselves bleeding in the middle of the street and being transported urgently," quips Liliana.
"This place was open six hours a day, six days a week, because the strangers did not know where to go.Outside us, the only place they could get treatment was the clinic. Naga volunteers badociation, on the other side of Milan, obviously we could not afford to treat them all because I can visit here, certainly not a liver transplant, "says Liliana.
To cope with this situation, the clinic and three other badociations – Caritas, Camminare insieme and Naga – are launching a popular initiative to guarantee access to treatment for all foreigners. later, some of the principles that inspired the text are found in the Turco-Napolitano law, commissioned by the Prodi government to regulate immigration to Italy. "In itself, the law is bad, but with three well-written articles , ours, who says that the foreigner is entitled to all necessary care, regardless of the legal status, "recalls Liliana. This is also the case of the law still in force today, the Bossi-Fini.
On paper, the right to health is guaranteed to all, foreigners who stay regularly have the obligation to register with the national health service, as well as asylum seekers and those who have benefited from some form of international protection. But in practice, things are more complicated: according to Médecins Sans Frontières, in Italy, "at least 10,000 people are excluded from reception, between applicants and holders of international and humanitarian protection, with limited or no access to essential goods and services. medical care ". Many of them "live in more and more hidden places and with increasingly limited contacts with local services, including health services".
The problem is that many – both those who have applied for asylum and those who have obtained some form of protection – live in occupied buildings and do not have a registered home, a necessary condition for having a general practitioner and easy access to rest of the health system. The same applies to homeless Italians and immigrants without a residence permit. This has partly altered the type of service offered by the clinic: from the center for those who do not have a place to seek treatment, it has become a general practitioner for those who do not care. do not have one.
With the law in force today, foreigners without a residence permit can go to the hospital and obtain urgent and essential care, thanks to the code "foreign temporarily present" (stp). "But it happened to see a person with a fistula arrive at the hand dismissed from Niguarda Hospital with the indication to go to the People's Medical Clinic," adds Luca, l & rsquo; # 39; nurse.
Discrimination
Over the years, the clinic has had to fight several times with those who do not want to provide drugs to foreigners without a residence permit. As Liliana recalls:
But discrimination also affects those who have the documents in order. Luke says, "It has been said that people with a regular residence permit have been informed that to have a primary care physician, it is necessary to submit a work contract, which is absolutely illegal because even a person has lost his job health care ".
In those years, the type of people going to the clinic also changed. Speaking, Liliana shows me a study of the first five hundred people visited between 1994 and 1996. "Half came from Africa and had a high school diploma, if not a diploma, almost all the others came from outside." According to Liliana, "today, the poorest are emigrants, many leave Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and half of them are illiterate." In the meantime, many people treated in the 1990s were integrated and some became volunteers of the center.
In the process of expulsion
The activity of the popular medical clinic does not please everyone, in In 2004, a war began between stamps, lawyers, bailiffs and eviction orders between Ciro Bigoni, the new owner of the building, and activists.In 2008, Bigoni won the Expulsion case
Several times announced, It has not yet been realized, thanks to the solidarity of many Milanese, who intervened in the defense of the clinic: "It has been postponed several times," recalls Liliana. We appealed to the solidarity of the neighborhood. Finally, in 2014, we reached an agreement with the property to pay a symbolic rent of 150 euros per month. "
Despite these difficulties, the center has never ceased to care for those who in need of it and, in the last few years, several projects have been born.One of them is Spampanato: "We realized that a lot of people come here not because they have physical problems Many people come because they are anxious or alone, so Lulu, the Argentinian psychologist who works with us, started this path of psychological support, "says Liliana." When we opened, we thought we would close immediately after provocating: show everyone that there are more and more people who are denied the right to treatment.But over the years, the situation seems worse, access to care it's not so obvious and that's why we still are: q Who would have said that we would continue for twenty-four years? "
[ad_2]
Source link
