The former Minister of Health: “The path for a detained sick person is traced, if necessary he will be transferred”
“To transfer a detained patient with cancer to hospital, you need the opinion of the prison doctor and the oncologist who follows him”. Health professionals must “indicate whether the assistance you need is hospital, outpatient or other type”. Francesco De Lorenzo, former Minister of Health, who has long been involved in defending the rights of cancer patients and president of the Federation of voluntary associations in oncology (Favo), explains it to Adnkronos Salute, regarding the worsening of Matteo Messina Denaro’s conditions , who, according to his lawyer Alessandro Cerella, with stage four cancer needs “immediate hospitalization, he can’t stand up anymore”.
De Lorenzo explains that, in general, the “path is already defined for a person in an advanced stage of illness who is in prison. There is no matter of contention. The magistrate decides on the basis of what the prison doctor and the prison doctor say. ‘oncologist’.
In the conditions denounced by Matteo Messina Denaro’s lawyer, “the question is whether he should remain in the structure in which he is staying or if he should be transferred, because, theoretically, even in the fourth stage of tumor disease, outpatient treatments can be performed“. Obviously, even from a strictly medical point of view, leaving out any other consideration, “there is no possibility of home care”. But if, for example, “the patient needs transfusions, he must be sent, again on the basis of the prison, in a center where they can be done. Treatments in the final stage of pathologies require continuous monitoring which can be done in special structures. I therefore believe that when it becomes necessary, the patient will be transferred.”
Source-www.adnkronos.com