The mayor of a small town in southern Italy has issued an unusual proclamation: “Getting sick is prohibited.”
Residents of Belcastro in the southern region of Calabria have been “ordered to avoid contracting any illness that requires medical assistance, especially an emergency,” a decree from Mayor Antonio Torchia stated.
Torchia told local television that while “we take (the decree) with a bit of irony,” it is intended to highlight the town’s inadequate access to healthcare.
Belcastro, a town of about 1,300 people of whom half are elderly, has a health center that is often closed, and on-call doctors are not available on weekends, holidays or after hours, the mayor said.
The closure of nearby healthcare centers, and the fact that the nearest emergency room is about 45 kilometers (28 miles) away in the city of Catanzaro, led the mayor to believe it necessary to “adopt an urgent and non-deferrable act of a precautionary nature,” he said.
“This is not just a provocation, the ordinance is a cry for help, a way to shine a spotlight on an unacceptable situation,” Torchia told local news outlet Corriere della Calabria.
In his decree, the mayor asked people not to “engage in behaviors that may be harmful and to avoid domestic accidents,” and “not to leave the house too often, travel or practice sports, and to rest for the majority of the time.”
It’s not clear if, or how, the ordinance will be enforced.
The mayor said the order was aimed at provoking regional authorities and health officials to address the issues. The ordinance will stay in effect until the town’s public health center is open regularly, the mayor said.
“Come and live a week in our small village and try to feel safe knowing that in the event of a health emergency the only hope is to get to Catanzaro in time,” he said while speaking to local media. “Try it and then tell me if this situation seems acceptable to you.”
The sparsely populated Calabria region is one of Italy’s poorest and has been susceptible to desertification and brain drain, with many young people moving out of rural communities to live in cities.
Over 75% of Calabria towns – roughly 320 – currently had fewer than 5,000 residents in 2021, sparking fears that some communities could die out completely without regeneration. Some towns have even started offering to pay people to live there in an effort to reverse their population decline.
Belcastro’s mayor knows that many of the towns face similar healthcare access issues.
“I am a drop in the ocean,” Torchia told local broadcaster LaC News24. “The province of Catanzaro has 80 municipalities, and I believe that most of them suffer from the same problems.”