Gemelli di Roma MEDU photographic exhibition is still ongoing: “A camper for rights”

ROME – It’s still going on, at the lobby of the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital Foundation IRCCS the photographic exhibition of Odino Vignali, operator of theDoctors Association for Human Rights (MEDU), entitled “A motorhome for rights”.

Humanitarian projects in Italy. MEDU is a humanitarian and international solidarity organization established in 2004 with the aim of treating, testifying and, starting from medical practice, denouncing human rights violations and in particular the exclusion from access to treatment. It operates in Italy – in Sicily, Calabria, Lazio, Tuscany and Piedmont, with projects aimed at socially fragile people, homeless or living in precarious settlements, whether they are Italian, migrants or refugees.

And those across the border. Abroad it is present in Ukraine, Niger, Egypt, in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel. The mobile clinic “A motorhome for rights“, the subject of the exhibition, has been traveling the streets of Rome for almost twenty years with the aim of reaching the most vulnerable population groups who live on the street or in informal settlements. The clinic operates in the evening, providing health assistance and socio-social orientation law to promote awareness of rights and access to local services.The intervention provides for the presence of a multidisciplinary team – made up of a project coordinator, a clinical coordinator, two linguistic-cultural mediators and a logistician – and a large group of volunteers, including doctors and social-legal workers.

Many do not care even though they have the right to. In fact, many of the patients reached by MEDU do not access social-health services, despite having the right to do so. The lack of information, the condition of isolation and marginality, language barriers, sometimes insurmountable bureaucratic obstacles, the fear – for some – of being reported as irregular, keep the most vulnerable people away from accessing treatment.

Make rights known to those who do not know them. For this reason, informing and guiding the people reached in an effective and culturally sensitive way are salient aspects of the care action, as well as witnessing and denouncing human rights violations and exclusion from the right to health. Collaboration with public health and social services is part of MEDU’s mission, with a view to subsidiarity and never substitution.