It took Silvia Bertuletti 11 days of frantic phone calls to persuade a doctor to visit her 78-year-old father Alessandro, who was gripped by fever and struggling for breath.
FILE PHOTO: A priest blesses the coffin of a woman who died from coronavirus disease at her funeral, as Italy struggles to contain the spread of coronavirus disease , in Seriate, Italy March 28, 2020. REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo
Interviews with families, doctors and nurses in Italy’s stricken Lombardy region indicate that Bertuletti’s experience is not uncommon, that scores are dying at home as symptoms go unchecked and that phone consultations are not always enough. “Doctors give people at home a treatment. But if this treatment doesn’t work, if there is no doctor who checks and changes or adjusts the medicines, then the patient dies.”
Authorities are now moving to reinforce primary care in line with recommendations by the World Health Organization, which says that delivering primary healthcare safely should be a priority for governments right after intensive care capacity. He said that although antibiotics were no cure for the virus, they could treat some of the debilitating complications and help patients recover without hospitalisation.
With her own family doctor in hospital, Bertuletti says she repeatedly phoned his replacement, who at first told her to give her father a paracetamol-based painkiller used to reduce fever. “I had to make a selection, I couldn’t visit those who had a cough and fever, I could only go to see the most serious cases.”
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