A petition launched on Change.org by Lucia Palermo, a woman originally from Caserta, to ask to review the rules that prevented her from participating in a public competition because she had a tumor. “In a certain sense, the rules equate someone who has had a tumor to a criminal, and this is not right. After overcoming breast cancer in 2021,” the woman says, “I was declared unfit for a public competition for a psychologist in the Guardia di Finanza because I was a former cancer patient. I had undergone emergency surgery and undergone chemotherapy and neoadjuvant radiotherapy (i.e. for pure prevention).
Today, I follow hormone therapy and I am fine. After years of study, master's degrees, commitment, I saw my dream shattered because I had an illness. Public competitions have an age limit, so I will no longer be able to participate". "The current bill on oncological oblivion - he explains - unfortunately would not solve anything in these cases, because it requires that 10 years have passed since the end of the illness". This is Palermo's request: "change the law and prevent these injustices from happening again for all people like me", we read in the text of his campaign and in the video appeal that accompanies it, both addressed to the government and parliament.
"The decree in question, to which the announcement refers, equates - the woman recalls - those who survive breast cancer to those who are still ill. Therefore considering post-cancer incompatible with military life. But if I have passed all the medical, psycho-attitudinal and physical tests, and if there are several oncologists who have written in black and white how I am fully healthy and able to carry out any activity without any problem, this is pure bureaucratic discrimination. I think it is necessary to modify this decree, given that today those who survive cancer have a life expectancy equal to those who have never had a tumor. I think it is useful for all the women who in the future will have the same problem and the same dream as me.
As long as the laws continue to make the lives of those who have fought against cancer a living hell, then our salvation will have served little purpose.” “I know that my dream has now been shattered because of a disease that I did not choose to have, but that I have nevertheless faced and overcome. If I am here today – we read in the petition – it is because I would like to change the future of a future Lucia who will have the same dream as me and unfortunately the same disease as me. I would not want her to experience this discrimination first-hand as I did.”
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