(Adnkronos)
From Andrea Crisanti to Antonella Viola, from Massimo Galli to Ilaria Capua up to Matteo Bassetti. The names of the experts and virologists who populate the TV at the time of the coronavirus for a post at the Ministry of Health, in the executive headed by Mario Draghi, bounce in these days.
CHRISANTS – Among the most popular is the name of Professor Andrea Crisanti, director of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Virology of the Padua hospital and professor of Microbiology at the city university. “I have not been asked to be Minister of Health” in a possible Draghi government, “neither officially nor unofficially. I have not received any calls. It is an invention of the press that practices guessing.” But would he do it? “I do not know”. In the meantime, “I think about it, I practice. Come on, who wouldn’t do it?”, He said in recent days, underlining that at the head of Italian Healthcare “we would need a competent person – that’s Crisanti’s opinion – It would take a person who has the skills to understand the effect of decisions in the medium and long term, and also judge the suggestions of the experts. A technician – he specified – is oriented only by forecasts and the impact of certain choices, the politician is influenced by many other things “.
PREGLIASCO – “Available to be the Minister of Health if they asked me? Who knows, but I don’t think the problem arises”, says Fabrizio Pregliasco, virologist at the University of Milan, guest of Un Giorno da Pecora, on Rai Radio1. “I am president of the Anpas and this is my way of doing ‘politics’, nor a sense of active citizenship”. And on the possibility, a virologist at the head of the department says: “In my opinion, health must be in the hands of politicians to follow the health objectives that their electoral elections require”.
GALLI – Massimo Galli, primary infectious disease specialist at the Sacco hospital in Milan, would definitely answer “no”, a lecturer at the State University of the Lombard capital. “If Mario Draghi were to call me to be the Minister of Health? I really hope he doesn’t. I don’t think I’m particularly suitable, I know how to do other things”, he tells those who ask him if he’s willing to take on a role in the new government that will have to be formed. “Especially in health care, there is a need not to have interruptions of various kinds – explains the expert – Long live continuity”, he adds. “I say this with all frankness and it is not a political evaluation, but a practical one”, he explains. In a situation like this you need “the maximum possible speed and efficiency”, which also means “avoiding long periods in which someone has to learn what to do all over again, which is a problem of almost every technician I know”.
Faced with the prospect that some virologists might be offered a government role, Galli believes that “the job of those who have some real competence on topics of this kind is fundamentally to advise and guide. It is not absolutely necessary, in my opinion, to put one of mine, of our profession in the position of minister or deputy minister or undersecretary. I think it is important that whoever is there to perform certain functions makes the best use of the indications, advice and even some operations of people with certain characteristics ” , but “it is not strictly necessary to put a person with a strictly technical profile to be a minister. If you do, I believe a choice must be made in the context of those who have an important profile in the field of public health. a clinician “, so” I’m not talking about myself in any case “.
VIOLA – Antonella Viola, immunologist at the University of Padua, prefers not to speak. “I do not express myself on this – he says – I have my projects on which I am working, then if there was a hand to help I could give it. In what form and in a way it is all to be evaluated. Certainly this is a delicate moment, in which all I think people who can contribute are happy to do so “. But have you received any phone calls? “I don’t answer unregistered numbers, so I have about twenty missed calls a day – he replies with a smile – But no”.
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