COURT FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE SICK

The Tribunal for Patients' Rights (TDM) is an initiative of Active Citizenship, born in 1980 to protect and promote the rights of citizens under the health and care services and to contribute to a more humane, effective and rational organization of the service NHS. The TDM is a network made up of ordinary citizens, but also by workers of different services and professionals, who undertake a voluntary basis (approximately 10,000).

It operates through:

1. about 300 local branches, present throughout the country, working in hospitals and community services;
2. a central, coordinating the activities of the network and promotes national initiatives;
3. thematic groups, at national, regional and local level, linked to specific programs;
4. regional coordination, support to local networks and the promotion of regional policies for the protection of rights in health;
5. Integrated Protection Project - Pit health - information service, advice and assistance to citizens on health care and social assistance, active both nationally and regionally and locally. The Pit health services collect each year about 25,000 reports, which are processed and published in the Pit Health Report, now in 2009 its 12 th edition.

The activity of TDM is to identify solutions aimed at removing unnecessary situations of suffering and injustice, does not exclude the public protest and appeal to the court, but favors the exercise of the powers to interpret situations, to mobilize consciences, to remedy the institutional bottlenecks and ultimately to achieve in the shortest possible time changes of the material realities that allow for the fulfillment of the rights violated. The activity is carried out not for profit.

They are part and parcel of the TDM promotion and implementation of policies oriented to assert his point of view of citizens in the welfare reform health care.

The TDM, as part of its overall objective to contribute to the improvement of the quality and the humanization of health services, considers its core tasks:
• ensure that wherever a citizen who needs assistance, counseling, help to defend legitimate expectations, it can find tools and opportunities for the preservation and protection of its rights;
• promote civic participation, so that citizens themselves are the protagonists of the protection measures in health care, both by welcoming in the activities of TDM, and by opening up spaces for civic activism organization health.
1980-2010. Thirty years of protection of rights: the main stages in the history of the Tribunal for Patients' Rights.

In 1978 was born in Rome on the Federative Democratic Movement, Active Citizenship Today, and G. Forty published "The man is denied", an essay on the condition of the patient who is in hospital suffering from the disease than for dysfunction. In 1979 Mrs. Mary Grace C. goes down in history for uttering the phrase "... why do not happen to others ..." in a letter-complaint for the death of her child occurred in a hospital in inhumane conditions

In 1980 they formed groups of volunteers throughout Italy to combat the unnecessary suffering of the sick. Is proclaimed the first "citizen's Charter rights of the 33 sick", 89 is followed by others throughout Italy. In 1990 he was made the first report on the status of citizens' rights in the health service, a civic survey involving 300 facilities and 25,000 citizens. In 1991 the campaign "We have a dream to transform hospitals in Italian hospitals." In 1996 he founded the Pit Health, an information service, counseling and assistance for citizens struggling with health issues. In 1997 he was presented on 1 Pit Health Report to the presence of the Head of State. In 2001, the Municipal Audit, a program that allows citizens to be active in quality assurance. In 2002 he was presented in Brussels the European Charter of Patients' Rights, the result of joint work with other civic organizations in 11 European countries. The card was recognized by the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Economic and Social Committee, as well as by the Italian Parliament passed a motion unanimously.

Some initiatives

• 1981 Sit-in in the ward of a group of mothers of children hospitalized for the opening of the ward for parents
• 1982 Campaign for the right to play with money boxes in stores to raise money to buy toys to donate to children at Christmas in a hospital in Rome
• Emergency summer 1983, due to lack of staff, volunteers to replace staff: do the cleaning, distributing food, start off on the sick
• Hunger strike of 1984 patients in the hospital to ask for hot food and good quality, dozens of garbage bags with food coming in the direction of the hospital
• 1987 In Naples a child dies in a hyperbaric chamber, the Tribunal for Patients' Rights created a risk map in all hospitals in Naples, reporting faulty equipment and facilities malfunzionanti1988 began a collaboration with the telecast Diogenes denouncing abuses and poor organization against its own citizens
• 1992 Article 14 of D.Lgs. 502/92 defines the role and powers of the last active citizenship in its relationship with the Public Health
• 1998 It starts after the explosion of a hyperbaric chamber in Milan, Ospedale sure, one of the most effective campaigns of the Tribunal for Patients' Rights on the issue of safety and risk in hospital
• 2001 is approved a law on the treatment of pain (n.12/2001) also under pressure from the Tribunal for Patients' Rights
• 2003 Event in Italy with all the display of license plates at 100 health facilities with the inscription: "The public health service belongs to the citizens, no one is allowed to weaken or delete"
• With the 2006 Presidential Decree, the Court for the rights of the patient gets the Gold Medal of Merit of Public Health
• 2008 A third of companies experienced the Italian health 'Municipal Audit, a form of public participation in the evaluation of the quality of health services local / regional
• 18 April 2009, Third Day European Patients' Rights: Italy involved in 52 cities in 17 regions