Shortage of doctors on board: a new Association is born in Italy
The lack of doctors on board in Italy is an increasingly long-standing problem for the port sector to face.
As explained by Doctor Claudio Bencini "The Coronavirus pandemic that began in 2019 is a global health emergency that has reduced the recruitment of doctors worldwide by 30% and made it difficult for shipowners to obtain the availability of the figure of the ship's doctor. , a necessary figure to be able to navigate almost all passenger ships with the Italian flag ".
An enormous problem that risked interrupting the right to territorial continuity that the Constitution guarantees to the islands.
A bureaucratic problem too
In recent months there have also been several alarms launched by the trade associations of shipowners; alarms that led to the birth of this very Association. It is also a bureaucratic problem, as always underlined by Doctor Bencini: “Starting from January 2021, heartfelt appeals have been issued by the ship's doctors' associations, by shipowners, by shipping companies and by Shipping Italy. In August 2021, the crisis caused by the Covid 19 Pandemic worsened further and Prof. Paolo Cremonesi, President of the Medibordo Category Syndicate, called for the simplification and modernization of the anachronistic bureaucracy of registration in the Lists of Qualified and Alternate Doctors on Board drawn up by the Ministry of Health ".
The mission of the MMA
The mission of the Maritime Medical Associations is of primary importance: the goal is in fact to recruit doctors on board ready to work and to regulate the shifts of this staff on a periodic level.
An action, this, already underway in an "experimental" way for some months with one of the most important Italian shipping companies and destined to expand like wildfire throughout the peninsula, facing openly an emergency in the emergency that has created many headaches for the important sector of port logistics and beyond.
