Naples – The death of little Domenico Caliendo has opened a wound that will not heal. And now, from that wound, a collective complaint emerges forcefully. The committee of parents of transplant children and adult transplant recipients treated at the Transplant Center at Monaldi Hospital in Naples has sent an open letter to the Governor of Campania, Roberto Fico, urgently requesting direct intervention from the Region to address what the signatories describe as a situation of serious management opacity.
The complaint: "We don't know who runs the Center"
The starting point is brutal in its simplicity: patients don't know who runs the facility on which their lives depend. "We learn from the newspapers that the head of the transplant program is no longer there, but no one tells us if and how this figure has been replaced," write the committee members, who lament the complete lack of official communication from company management. A gap that, in such a delicate context, takes on the aspect of a true emergency.
Intensive and sub-intensive care: structural deficiencies
The critical issues raised aren't limited to governance. The committee also denounces the lack of clear information on how many intensive care beds are actually dedicated to transplants and highlights the lack of a dedicated sub-intensive care unit, which it calls "an essential element in such complex processes." "The company's top management has failed to manage the process and continues to keep organizational information in their offices," the letter states in a heartfelt but firm tone.
The appeal to Fico: "Send a third party."
The request to the Regional President is direct and unambiguous: send "a third party" to Monaldi with the mandate to ensure "transparency, organization, and clear and responsible management of the transplant process." The committee calls for "full clarity on who makes the decisions, with what responsibilities, and with what resources," restoring families' trust in a system they currently perceive as "fragile, confusing, and difficult to understand."
Regrets for the 2021 Single Transplant Center
The letter concludes with a bitter passage with obvious political implications. The signatories recall how a similar level of guarantees had been "laboriously achieved" in 2021 with the establishment of the Single Transplant Center, then "miserably cancelled without justification."
This attack leaves open the question of the political and administrative responsibilities for that decision. The committee says it is open to any constructive discussion, but expects the governor to provide "public feedback and concrete action."
I am very worried about this situation, the parents have expressed their fear but no one tells us who is in charge of the Center, the patients do not know who to turn to, intensive care places are not being contacted, the sub-intensive care unit is missing, the region must send a third party and clarify the situation immediately.