By Tom Westcott.
Tripoli, 17 November 2013:
Italy has offered medical treatment in a top hospital in Rome for Libyans injured in Friday . . .[restrict]night’s bloody clashes in Tripoli’s Gharghour district.
An agreement was signed by the two countries in January 2012 to treat wounded revolutionaries in the San Camillo Hospital. Treatment has been ongoing for nearly two years in a special section of the hospital reserved for Libyan patients, and free beds there are now being offered for people injured on Friday night.
“This has halal food, Libyan TV and a Libyan cultural mediator,” Italian ambassador Giuseppe Buccino Grimaldi told the Libya Herald. “There are some places in this section still available and, at this difficult time in Libya’s transition, it is our pleasure to be able to offer this help.”
General Consul at the Italian embassy in Tripoli, Pierluigi Delia, told this newspaper that there were around 100 people needing treatment abroad and that priority would be given to the most urgent cases. “We are now waiting for the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to give us names and further details,” he said.
Once the names were given, patients would be fast-tracked through the formalities, with urgent cases getting visas at the airport and less urgent cases getting visas here in Tripoli, he said. “There is currently availability for 20 people,” Delia said, but added that further patients may be able to go to other Italian hospitals. “We will see how we can help,” he said.
Treatment would be provided by Italy free of charge, Delia said, with the Libyan government paying for the transport of patients and covering accommodation costs for patients’ families.
The San Camillo hospital has a special connection with Libya after its director, Professor Aldo Morrone, spent time working in hospitals in Benghazi and Misrata during the revolution. [/restrict]
