Italian Police Units Inspect Hospitals
Posted on: Monday, 8 January 2007, 21:00 CST
By ARIEL DAVID
ROME - Police were inspecting hospitals across Italy on Monday, after a magazine investigation into one of Rome's largest hospitals showed images of dog feces and garbage in the corridors, unguarded radioactive material, abandoned medical records and workers smoking next to patients.
Special health units of the Carabinieri paramilitary police were verifying hygiene practices in Italian hospitals and results of the investigation would be presented to Premier Romano Prodi, the Health Ministry said in a statement.
Ministry officials said they had no further details and did not know how long the inspections would last.
Politicians promised swift action after L'Espresso weekly published an article by an undercover reporter who posed as a cleaner for a month at Rome's Umberto I Polyclinic, denouncing conditions that endangered patients by exposing them to an increased risk of hospital infections.
The report last week sparked outrage in Italy and prompted some politicians to demand that the sprawling hospital, built at the end of the 19th century, be closed or demolished.
The hospital on Monday referred requests for comment to remarks by hospital officials during a Friday press conference. The hospital's director, Ubaldo Montaguti, acknowledged serious problems at Umberto I, but said the hospital needed to stay open while officials worked to fix the situation.
Freely roaming the hospital's wards, L'Espresso's journalist snapped pictures and videos of dog feces and piles of garbage in corridors; unguarded radioactive material, biohazards and infectious samples; abandoned medical records as well as personnel found smoking outside the intensive care unit and while transferring patients.
In one video, shot in a dark corridor with peeling paint, he approaches two white-clad hospital workers who had just lit up asking if they are aware of the smoking ban.
"We know, but it's six o'clock," one of them answers.
The journalist wrote he was never challenged during his stay, accessing the hospital through an unguarded entrance and working undisturbed thanks only to his blue cleaner's uniform.
In ordering the inspections, the Health Ministry noted that hospital infections affect between 4.5 and 7 percent of those treated in Italian hospitals, in line with European Union averages. However, L'Espresso's article quoted research by Rome's La Sapienza University done in 1999 as saying that the rate of hospital infections at the Umberto I reached a record 15.2 percent.
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On the Net:
http://espresso.repubblica.it
Source: Associated Press/AP Online
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