Emergency's free, universal healthcare doesn't only reach remote war zones — it also reaches the hidden corners of our own country where the most vulnerable groups live, such as rural areas. An editorial by Rossella Miccio, president of the organisation.
The work of Emergency around the world is inspired by the very simple idea that every individual has the right to live well and in good health. It is by following this principle that, from 1994 to the present day, we have treated around ten million people. The idea of treating everyone, free of charge and to a high standard, is so simple it might seem trivial and obvious — and yet it is not. It is no coincidence that the right to health finds its place in constitutional texts, in international documents and conferences, which enshrine its inalienability and protection.
It is no coincidence, because health too often needs to be literally defended from war and its consequences, from poverty and from many other obstacles that can prevent a person from accessing the care to which they are entitled. This does not happen only in Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq or in other distant countries torn apart by deep deprivation or interminable conflicts. It happens here too, right on our doorstep. For this reason, after operating abroad for over a decade, in 2006 Emergency began working in Italy as well, where today, through eleven projects, it offers care to foreign nationals and, increasingly, to Italians living in conditions of vulnerability.
It was precisely in those years that the existence of neglected areas in our country was emerging with ever greater urgency — places where, in the shadows, a daily hell was being endured, and continues to be endured, by the most fragile sections of our society. Shanty towns, suburbs, nomad camps: all places cut off from fundamental rights and services, ignored by institutions, and united by living conditions and sanitary standards that are unacceptable for a country governed by the rule of law and which prides itself on being one of the seven most advanced economies in the world.
Many of these areas are concentrated in our countryside, which has become the grim repository of people fleeing a life without a future, willing to do anything just to find work, and easy victims of a predatory economy that has always fed greedily on cheap labour in order to survive. From the vineyards of Piedmont to the greenhouses of the Ragusa area, many of Italy's rural districts are today the fertile ground where both the excellences and the iniquities of our country flourish side by side.
According to the Cgil – Flai Placido Rizzotto Observatory, around 100,000 people, predominantly foreign nationals, are forced to endure forms of labour exploitation and to live in precarious social and housing conditions. In this context, characterised by unmet needs and trampled fundamental rights — often with the convenient pretext of economic crisis — we began operating to bring social and healthcare assistance to farmworkers in the Capitanata area of Puglia. That was 2011, and we have not stopped since: following the cyclical movement of farmworkers as they travel in search of seasonal employment, we have worked in the Agro di Venosa in Basilicata, in the Piana di Gioia Tauro in Calabria, in the provinces of Syracuse and in the transformed strip of Sicily, in Castel Volturno in Campania, and in Latina, in Lazio.
Dove l'erba trema. Vite invisibili nelle campagne d'Italia is a publishing project by Emergency, produced in collaboration with four comics artists — Gianluca Costantini, Simona Binni, Mattia Surroz and Sio — created to tell the story of a reality that exploits, tramples on rights and enriches itself from the toil of the most vulnerable; of the exploited, whom labour strips of dignity and turns into new slaves. And, finally, of those who defend the fundamental rights of these people. Dove l'erba trema is a journey that begins in Castel Volturno, passes through Puglia and reaches Calabria, to tell the story of how living in a ghetto can be fatal. Those who live there have neither home nor rights — not even the most basic ones, such as the right to medical care, recognised as inalienable but in practice frequently denied.
It is the most vulnerable who pay the consequences — people who frequently encounter obstacles of various kinds when trying to access care. These are the people we meet in Emergency's facilities, where the stories of migrants who have just arrived intersect with those of Italians and foreign nationals who are perfectly documented but have "fallen through the cracks" of the healthcare system after losing their jobs, their homes and their rights.
Through the use of mobile clinics, Emergency has managed to venture into isolated and hidden areas, seeking to respond to the needs of a section of the population burdened by several factors of vulnerability: precarious living conditions (isolation, lack of electricity and sanitation), job insecurity, limited awareness of their own rights, administrative obstacles to registering with the national health service, social marginalisation, and emotional fragility.
Working on the margins of society has taught us that gains in the field of rights are not immutable; on the contrary, sometimes even those taken for granted are exposed to the risk of a slow, daily and imperceptible erosion that can go unnoticed. Faced with this awareness, we wanted to make our contribution so that access to healthcare does not become a privilege, but an opportunity to restore dignity to those who feel they are no longer entitled to it. This is how care becomes a social practice.
