Healthcare strike on 5 December, doctors and students in the streets against Maneuver

The joint demonstration has been called for Saturday 5 December in Rome "to defend the right to treatment and the future of the National Health Service". The procession will start at 3.00 pm from Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II and arrive in Via dei Fori Imperiali. The men and women of public health will be mobilized: doctors, veterinarians, nurses, midwives, health professions, technicians, administrators, students, medical and non-medical specialists, researchers, together with their professional and trade union representatives. It will be a united front, the organizations say, "without any distinction of role, category or acronym".

Organizing the demonstration are 27 unions and associations who take to the streets because, as stated in the joint note, the NHS "belongs to everyone: to those who care every day and to those who need to be cared for. Today this common good is weakened by years of policies characterized by insufficient investments in the health of the population and by a poor valorisation of hospital, outpatient, local, training and research staff. It is the citizens who pay the price, that is, all of us". And again: "To those who work and study in healthcare we say: you are not alone. To those waiting for a visit, hospitalization or assistance we say: it cannot be a lottery. Health cannot depend on income or postal code of residence: there is the right to treatment and the right to cure". On 5 December "public health will be there to make itself heard, demonstrating with the pride of being the National Health Service and with the firm awareness that the system must be defended and strengthened. What drives the mobilization are the hope and determination to make all this possible again, because we are and will be the NHS". The initiative is open to all citizens who want to take to the streets "to defend public health".