Doctors launch campaign agst racism

(ANSA) - Rome, September 21 - Italian doctors on Friday launched a campaign to wipe out racism and intolerance in the national health service.
    The head of the federation of of surgeons and orthodontists' guilds Fnomceo, Filippo Anelli, proposed the campaign after an oncologist at a Cagliari hospital in Sardinia denounced in a Facebook post that relatives of some of her patients who were waiting for palliative care complained they had been waiting for too long, saying it was a "negro's fault".
    Anelli told ANSA the idea is "to involve other health professionals too as well as citizens' associations".
    Posters against racism will be put up in streets, studios and hospitals, he said.
    The Cagliari doctor, Maria Cristina Deidda, said she had briefly left the clinic where the patients were waiting for a consultation "on a patient of Senegalese origin" at the hospital.
    "As many as four people, who were accompanying some of my patients, complained they were kept waiting and it was a 'negro's fault'", the doctor said, apologizing on their behalf and saying she felt "deeply ashamed" for their behavior, a local daily reported.