ROME — The Italian army will start guarding medical staff at a hospital in the southern Calabria region from Monday, after a string of violent attacks on doctors and nurses by enraged patients and relatives across , according to local media reports. Prefect Paolo Giovanni Grieco has approved a plan to reinforce the surveillance services already operated by soldiers on sensitive targets in the Calabrian town of Vibo Valentia, including the hospital, the reports added. Recent attacks on health workers have been particularly frequent in southern , prompting doctors’ national guild to ask for the army to be deployed to ensure medical staff’s safety.
The turning point was 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. Video footage, widely circulated on social media, showed doctors and nurses barricading in a room to escape the attack.
Some of them were punched and injured. 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 uni.