Two plastic surgeons on a mission with the Civil Defense after the disastrous accident in Freetown
di Francesco Unali
14 February 2022 - Freetown, November 5, 2021: in the Wellington district a tanker full of fuel overturns attracting the curiosity of passers-by. Suddenly a violent explosion surprised the onlookers and those who had approached to grab some petrol. More than 100 are dead, hundreds are seriously burned and injured. The Sierra Leone government launches its request for help from the European Union and the Italian government activates the Department of Civil Protection , health management of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital accepts the appeal of Ares 118 Lazio. So from 18 to 28 November last year director dell 'Plastic Surgery Unit Paolo Persichetti and specializing Carlo Myrrh they were part of the international relay of doctors involved in the emergency. Together with them anesthesiologists from Rome and Bologna, doctors and nurses from Niguarda in Milan.
"We have followed more than 20 people daily by performing skin transplants, removing necrotic tissue and avoiding infections – explains the prof. Paolo Persichetti - Each morning the group met to discuss priority cases. We operated at Emergency hospital and Choitram Memorial Hospital. It was a very strong experience, given the great contrasts between the wealth present in the country and the extreme poverty of the people who have an income of about 2 dollars a day".
Freetown, the African capital of two million inhabitants, overlooks the sea with splendid mountains behind it: many slums and people who live on the street, very few services, starting with healthcare. Hospitals are insufficient and often born on the initiative of NGOs or other countries, as in the case of Emergency or the Indian republic. "The lives of many patients were at stake in this humanitarian mission – Persichetti still remembers – working conditions were not simple and many medicines were missing. We had to rely on clinical experience as it was very difficult to monitor patients. A very significant lesson for our profession, today so accustomed to using precise instruments that make doctors less ready to analyze problems on their own and set up therapies on their own”.
