Army to guard hospital in southern Italy after a spate of attacks on medical staff

Italian officials have ordered the Army to protect a hospital in the south of the country after a spate of attacks on doctors and nurses.

Calabria prefect Paolo Giovanni Grieco approved the security plan after attacks by enraged relatives of patients at the hospital in the Calabrian town of Vibo Valentia, according to local reports.

Recent attacks on health workers have been particularly frequent in southern Italy , prompting doctors' national guild to ask for the army to be deployed to ensure medical staff's safety.

The call came after an assault at the Policlinico hospital in the southern city of Foggia in early September.

A group of about 50 relatives and friends of a 23-year-old woman - who died during emergency surgery - turned their grief and rage into violence, attacking the hospital staff.

Viral social media footage showed doctors and nurses barricaded themselves in a room to escape the attack, with some healthcare workers being punched.

The director of the hospital threatened to close its emergency room after denouncing three similar attacks in less than a week.

With over 16,000 reported cases of physical and verbal assaults in 2023 alone, Italian doctors and nurses have called for drastic measures.

"We have never seen such levels of aggression in the past decade," said Antonio De Palma, president of the Nursing Up union.

"We are now at a point where considering military protection in hospitals is no longer a far-fetched idea. We cannot wait any longer," he added.

The Italian Federation of Medical-Scientific Societies (Fism) has also proposed more severe measures for offenders, such as suspending access to free medical care for three years for anyone who assaults healthcare workers or damages hospital facilities.

Understaffing and long waiting lists are the main reasons behind patients' frustration with health workers.

According to Italy's largest union for doctors (ANAAO), nearly half of emergency medicine positions remained unfilled as of 2022.

Doctors claim wages for healthcare workers are too low, leading to overworked and burnout staff at hospitals.

These problems have been further aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has pushed many health workers to leave Italy in search of better opportunities abroad.

In 2023, Italy was short of about 30,000 doctors, and between 2010 and 2020, the country saw the closure of 111 hospitals and 113 emergency rooms, according to an industry estimate.

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