In Rome, in front of the stations and in occupied buildings, and in Foggia, in the “ghettos” of the laborers, we assist the population with difficulty in accessing the public health system with the mobile social and health units.
Exactly one year ago in Italy the COVID-19 alarm was triggered and a long period of lockdown began. But who has thought of the assistance and health monitoring of all those people who do not have a home or who live in buildings with inadequate sanitation? INTERSOS, which for nine years in Italy has been carrying out socio-health interventions aimed at the most vulnerable and marginalized individuals, in March last year, with the arrival of the pandemic, strengthened its activities with the aim of supporting the public health system.
In Rome, in particular, the public outpatient clinic in the Intersos24 Centre in Torre Spaccata, was converted onto the street and the activities of the team of doctors, mediators and psychologists has been strengthened to edge of a mobile unit (the team is active since 2016 in partnership with UNICEF). The activities have all focused on the prevention of COVID-19 by offering medical visits and information sessions in front of Termini and Tiburtina stations and in several occupied buildings in Rome.
The same anti-COVID-19 conversion took place in the Foggiano area, where our staff has been supporting hundreds of seasonal workers since 2018 forced to live in real “ghettos” in precarious sanitation conditions. Both in Rome and among the laborers in Puglia, in addition to medical visits and monitoring of cases at risk, kits with hygienic material were distributed.
A model of territorial medicine that can be carried out beyond the emergency
From the beginning of the intervention to date, the mobile teams between Rome and Foggia, have intercepted and supported 9,500 people through medical examinations and involved 9,947 people in health education sessions.
“Thanks to our constant presence in the area, the multidisciplinary composition of the teams and a cross-cultural approach, we have been able to establish relationships of trust with people who would otherwise be denied the right to health due to bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic and sometimes banal practical barriers”, explains Alessandro Verona, INTERSOS medical referent. “This was essential in a time of health emergency because it allowed us to carry out health surveillance on a segment of the population that would otherwise not have been reached by the health authorities. Our role was precisely to act as a bridge between health institutions and communities, initiating a direct dialogue between these two realities. An excellent example of this mediation work are the activities we have carried out in housing occupations in Rome, in which we have trained health representatives directly within the communities. This made it possible to create a direct line between the referents and the ASL of reference, who now interact independently and collaborate in the management of any positive cases”. “In addition to the direct relationship with the communities, also the dialogue with the institutions has given great results”, explains Alessandro Verona.
“In Foggia, for example, we were able to obtain the installation by the Puglia Region of cisterns for drinking water available to the informal settlements of the province and the activation of a system for handling suspected cases directly on site and planned with the health and regional authorities. In Rome, on the other hand, we signed several Protocols with the Municipality, one in particular which allowed us to safely reactivate the shelters in the capital, which were blocked for several months due to the health emergency. We can say that in this year we have created a model of territorial medicine that can be carried out even beyond the emergency”, concludes the medical referent of INTERSOS.