Almost thirty thousand poor people arrived in Italy from the African coasts, fleeing the war in Syria and African armed struggles. An imposing and epochal migration flow that shows no sign of abating, ignored by Europe and managed by Italy with a humanitarian approach that is part of the DNA of our cultural and historical tradition.
So much generosity but a lot of improvisation due to lack of information and resources.
It is now established and confirmed by the various testimonies collected by the media that a large percentage of this poor people, once on the ground, flees before they are registered and are detected fingerprints in the absence of identification documents. The most without even being subject to specific health checks.
Among these there could be infiltrated terrorists, criminals, drug traffickers, carriers of serious diseases that had now been eradicated in the West, in particular TB, scabies and polio.
From these pages we have denounced, after the alarm of the WHO on cases of ebola with deaths in central and western Africa, that also haemorrhagic fever could be conveyed among our population.
A proposed analysis of the 4 April 2014 (http://fernandotermentini.blogspot.it/2014/04/la-febbre-emorragica-potre...) and resumed shortly after the 22 April (http://fernandotermentini.blogspot.it/2014/04/ebola-gli-italiani-hanno-d...) after learning that a migrant had died due to uncertain causes in a reception center in Sicily.
Words fallen into thin air, on the contrary considered by many mere alarmism on the basis of probabilistic rather than objective assessments, while in France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, specific controls were carried out on passengers flying from Africa.
Yesterday the news suddenly circulated that with a message from the 14 May at the hours posted at 14: 43 Z, the General Staff of Defense informed the Major States of the Armed Forces and the Arm of the Carabinieri that the military personnel engaged in the operations outside from the national borders it could be exposed to risk Coronavirus infection (MERS-CoV) and "recommends case definitions related to the disease".
Coronavirus causes the well-known SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), an atypical form of pneumonia that first appeared in November 2002 in Guangdong Province (Canton) in China. (source: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS).
Suspected cases must be isolated, preferably in rooms with negative pressure, and complete protection of medical personnel must be guaranteed to guarantee any direct contact with the patient.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control recorded, at 30 April 2014, 424 cases of infection worldwide; 131 of these resulted in the death of patients. Some cases have been reported in England and France, linked directly or indirectly with the Arabian peninsula or neighboring Middle Eastern areas such as Jordan and probably Syria.
The migratory flows continue, inhabitants of Mali, Ghana and the sub-Saharan belt of Africa, where the health emergency for Ebola is still ongoing, they arrive embarked on crumbling boats mixed with Middle Easterns in close physical contact, in especially Syrians, many from Jordan refugee camps. They come into contact with our Armed Forces, with the Armed Corps of the State and with the volunteers engaged in the Mare Nostrum operation and transported to the collection centers from where many immediately flee without being visited or identified and swarmed into Italy projected towards Europe of the north, naturally coming into contact with the resident population and using public transport.
The European Union does not seem to notice the phenomenon. The European Agency for the management of international cooperation at the external borders of the Member States, Frontex, seems more committed to accounting for the percentages of arrivals rather than developing analyzes and risk plans, as instead it would fall within its institutional mandate.
Italy, which is more exposed to possible new health problems than other countries, is alone and it is disturbing that in the midst of an immigration emergency it was possible to learn about this worrying risk by chance, through a message from CINCNAV Command in Chief of the Naval Team, the operative arm of the Naval Staff.
It is hoped that the ministry of health immediately appropriates the problem even though it is still in its hypothetical state, not only with more or less generalized circulars like that of 4 Aprile us on the Ebola problem, but by issuing precise medical protocols and equipping the operators in first line of adequate health systems to deal with any cases; first of all chambers and stretchers with negative pressure and adequate protective clothing for operators.
It is hoped that even in this case a wall of confidence will not be raised by cutting off citizens from any information and that the ministries of health, defense, interiors and foreigners provide immediate reassurance on the prevention devices that they have certainly already put into act.
A practice of "non-information" that is now consolidated day by day in our country, as confirmed by the absolute absence of information on cargoes carrying ships carrying Syrian chemical weapons and should soon land in Italy in the port of Gioia Tauro.
Otherwise it would be clear that we would find ourselves, once again, faced with improvisation rather than careful planning of possible risks and we would be destined to rely once again on "good luck."
Fernando Termentini
