Transplants at Monaldi, organizational meeting tomorrow but parents' protest continues

Naples. Healthcare: a meeting will be held tomorrow at the Azienda Ospedaliera dei Colli di Napoli to define the organizational model of Monaldi Napoli that brings together the best professionals of the Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Operating Unit and the Transplant Cardiology. This was learned from a joint note issued by the Health Directorate and the Transplant Center of the Campania Region. "The suspension of pediatric transplants - continues the note - was decided a year ago by the Ministry of Health following the verification of the negative outcomes of the interventions and the failure to integrate the teams in light of the resources committed. However, currently, the Monaldi hospital has the Adult Cardiac Surgery Operating Units, Transplant Cardiac Surgery, Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, Adult and Pediatric Cardiology with related UTIC, with the Intensive Care Operating Units of cardiac surgery for adults and for pediatric age. This structure is able to fully satisfy the care needs of adult and pediatric patients in the various care phases of the transplant. On the basis of the monitoring carried out, a new organizational model will be defined, also taking into account the procedures started by the Hospital Trust for the reactivation of transplant activities, expected before the summer, after the authorization of the National Transplant Center”.
But the parents of transplanted children continue their protest. The parents of heart transplanted children are worried and have made an appointment for tomorrow, in front of the Monaldi headquarters, to continue their protest. The Committee of parents of transplanted children is calling for the resignation of the heads of the two operational units. “Due to internal disagreements and conflicts, the activities are suspended,” says Dafne Palmieri, representative of the Committee. “We do not believe that this is ethically correct behavior.” “We are even more worried after the news spread that there will be a meeting tomorrow at the headquarters of the Colli Company,” she explains. “They talk about 'defining an integrated organizational model,' but in reality this model has already been approved, first in December 2016, and then with an integration in November 2017. Why discuss an organizational model?” Palmieri, mother of a transplanted child, points out that “the operational units currently present at Monaldi are not sufficient to take charge of the small patients, even before the transplant.” “It is not us parents who say it – he adds – but a document of the State-Regions Conference, of January 18, 2018, which establishes that the current activities are not sufficient. Pediatric transplant patients have no places of hospitalization”. “We do not believe that there is a real will to solve the problem – he concludes – and we fear that the solution we are moving towards tends to support the conflict, but not to make the lives of our children safe”.