In the middle of the summer season there are no doctors on the ships. The alarm was sounded by Mario Mattioli, President of Confitarma, and Stefano Messina, President of Assaulters, who sent an open letter to the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, to solicit a concrete solution to the problem of the lack of doctors available to embark on ships flying the Italian flag.
In particular, the letter expresses extreme concern for a situation that has long been reported as problematic at an operational level, which has since worsened with the current health emergency. The risk is that thousands of citizens could be stuck on the docks and without the possibility of moving to and from the islands, de facto deprived of the constitutional right to territorial continuity.
“Once again – the letter states – in our country we persist in applying a source of secondary rank, the Ministerial Decree of June 13, 1986, much less flexible than the obligations established by international legislation, the Maritime Labor Convention (MLC) of 2006”.
The two associations that bring together Italian shipowners have detected positive signs after the publication. In fact, the competent Directorate General of the Ministry of Health has issued a Circular on the matter which extends the authorization to embark qualified doctors to 30 days to the practice of the profession, in the absence of qualified ship's doctors thanks to a five-year competition provided for by a Royal Decree of 1897.
However, the Associations do not consider the initiative activated by the Ministry to be decisive given that, currently, medical personnel available for boarding are completely untraceable as they are already dedicated to other health activities of vital importance to deal with the pandemic: the shortage of doctors on the whole national territory was also found by the Government in the implementation phase of the vaccination campaign.
Confitarma and Assarmatori therefore request the urgent adoption of derogation from the application of the Ministerial Decree of 13 June 1986, without prejudice to full compliance with the provisions on the subject established by the 2006 Maritime Labor Convention and the possibility of resorting to the use of the 24-hour medical assistance service provided by the CIRM – Centro Internazionale Radio Medico, linked by a historic collaboration with the Italian shipping industry.
