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Hospital
staysEven Minister Veronesi has programmed the reduction in the length
of hospital stays.
Reducing the hospital bed occupation times: always an attractive theme
to attempt to reduce the health expenses.
But
there are even more enticing reasons to stay in bed, that have been
recently creating new ones. I am talking about the official recognition
that professional sexual services are "health services to all intents
and purposes", and as such - while still in definite and well-defined
cases - are covered by national health insurance. One case is the episode
involving the USL Bari 5 (Bari health authorities - Unit 5), which for
six months has been offering Sildenafil free of charge to some fifty
paraplegics in the province, predominantly young myeloplegics resulting
from accidents.
This
marks the first time that a drug for erectile dysfunction (what's more,
in the "C-group" of the CUF (Italian Official Pharmaceutical Centre)
can be reimbursed by a public structure, but was precisely the method
decided "to help these patients in their relationships and love life":
and successfully, too, considering that the initiative is being extended
even further. "With the due precautions, especially with regards to
these particularly fragile victims", comments Professor Tiziana Redaeli,
coordinator of the spinal unit of Niguarda (Milan), where the problem
has already been dealt with locally through the use of prostaglandin
injections.
The completeness of a rehabilitative therapy aimed at returning myelitis
paraplegics (or similar) to sexual activity shouldn't end upon the return
of normal erectile functioning: it is important that it reaches its
completeness naturally, in order that this sexual rehabilitation is
not in vain.
In
other words: so that the example of European jurisprudence is followed,
as the EU has recommended. An example was set three years ago with an
unprecedented (at that time) sentence by the court of Tilburg (NL),
that has since passed through all the judiciary phases, making an appeal
impossible.
Thus,
the wheelchair-confined handicapped person, promoter of the civil action,
has been awarded full reimbursement from the city administration, in
charge of health assistance, for the services rendered by a prostitute".
Calling attention to the principals of the Dutch law with regards to
health assistance - which do not identify specific rules for cases of
this nature - the argument that persuaded the judgement at Tilburg maintained
that "assistance rendered to resolve sexual problems for a disabled
person can be equated to all effects with a valid health service". Rehabilitative
value should be considered not only under the merely physiological -
the neck and spine - and psychological aspects, but rather, much more
widely as both cerebral and mental. Let's remember the studies done
by French researchers at the Inserm, when they demonstrated - contemporaneously
with the launching of the "claim of Tilburg" - that the human brain
shows high levels of activity even only viewing a pornographic movie.
A
group of young people (from 21 to 25 years of age) were monitored with
the PET while they watched, in this order, a geographical documentary,
a comic film, and finally a pornographic movie. Geography left the brain
quite dark, the absurd caused some weak flashes, while the more explicit
erotic film's scenes lit up the three encephalic areas that control
sexual excitement: the perception of the stimulus, emotion, preparation
for action. Since these were healthy volunteers, we can stop here: action
is enough to demonstrate possibility.
But
in order to arrive at the "preparation for action", by prescribing Sildenafil
to paraplegics, and then stopping there, this surely means guaranteeing
them a much worse fate of "preparation for frustration". We cannot entice
them without at the same time offering them the opportunity to consumate:
the stays in the hospital beds may tend to decrease as far as the length
of occupation by each patient, however with the motivation of the global
sexual rehabilitation, we might find the case (risk?) where the number
of occupants per single bed may increase.
An
enticing proposition for the bedridden, and a savings for the National
Health Services?
Those
who use viagra will soon see...
(traduzione
Interpres sas-Giussano)
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