MILANO – Bags full of dead, kids skinned alive, starving children, and the women all raped. Difficult to even recognize these bodies: many no longer even have fingerprints. These are Dr.'s "patients". Peter Bartolo, doctor of Lampedusa, which for decades now has welcomed i migrants exhausted from the crossing, the living ones and the dead ones. The account of what he experienced in his years of service did Virginia DiVivo, a medical student at the University of Modena. This is his post on Facebook.

“I go very sleepy to the most inflated congress of my university career, aware that I will probably fall asleep in the upper rows of the great hall. my thirst, I read the lineup, the second item is “public health and immigration: the fundamental right to health protection. Inevitably I think "and what do bali". I turn on Pokémon Go, which are above a blue team gym. I'm about to conquer her for the reds. Doctor Pietro Bartolo begins to speak, that I don't know who it is. I don't care. I was there trying to catch a bulbasaur and I hear his voice in the background: it does not speak of epidemiology, of etiology, does not focus on the statistics of who knows what syndrome lallallà. Talk about people. Keep saying "people like us". I decide to listen to him with one ear and bulbasaur with the other. Bartolo says he's there, a Lampedusa, it treated 350,000 people, that there is one thing he hates, that is, do the cadaveric inspection. That many no longer have fingerprints. And he has to pick fingers, cost, ears. He tells it: “Give it? They have all been raped. ALL. They often arrive pregnant. Those who aren't pregnant aren't pregnant, not because they weren't raped, they are not because the traffickers have given them an estrogen-progestin cocktail in questionable doses, so as to be raped in front of everyone, to humiliate them. Risk free, that pregnant women on the prostitution market do not make money". My perplimo".

At that point the student wonders: “But it wasn't a clinical congress? Where are the therapies? Why the voice of an internist is not boring me with the meta-analysis on the use of sticazzitin tetrasulfate? I decide to ditch bulbasaur, a jailer, then I come back to Bulba, I need to understand what this guy is saying. “On these barges the men all stand on board, like a human chain, to protect women, children and the elderly inside, from cold and water. They are families. Families like ours”. Show a photo, view and review, but he is not rhetorical, it's not formal. It is out of any politically correct scheme, out of any comfort zone. “One night they called me: two dinghies had landed, I had to go to help. I have visited all, they didn't have the diseases that some say are brought here by them. They had diseases that anyone could have. Who are treated with trivial therapies. Harmless. Some. Others were skinned alive, to make them white. This guy for example", show another photo, anything but seen and reviewed. A young man, that he will have had 15/16 years, sliced ​​from knee to ankle. I forget about Pokémon. “He survived the unholy experiments they did on him. His brother, instead, He did not make it. He died from being skinned alive”. I put the cell phone in my pocket. ”Someone tells me to go look in the hold, that won't be a good show. So I go down, I felt like I was walking on pillows. I turn on my phone's flashlight and I find this..”. Show another photo. It looked like a mass grave. Bodies piled up like jars of lifeless men. “This photo is not fake. I made it. But they don't show it to you on the news. They died there, of asphyxiation. When we cleaned them I found some of them with pieces of wood stuck in their hands, with broken fingers. They were trying to get out. They had been told that since they were young, strong and agile than the others, they would make the journey in the hold and then, easily, they would be out for air soon. But no. When the air began to fail, they tried to get out through the hatch on the deck, but they were kicked down, with blows on the head. Did you know how many I've found with skull fractures, of the teeth. I went out throwing up and crying. Did you know how much I cried in 28 years of service, you cannot imagine”. Now there is no one in the lecture hall who does not hold their breath, in silence. “But there are also beautiful things, things that keep you going. A girl. He was in deep hypothermia, in cardiac arrest. She was dead. We had nothing. I started massaging her. For a long time. And suddenly I picked it up. He had edema, of everything. She was hospitalized 40 days. Kebrat was his name. And his name. Lives in Sweden. She came to see me after years. She was pregnant” she shows us the photo of their embrace”.

Di Vivo explains Bartolo's concern: “People don't understand. There is someone who spoke of purebred. But the pure breed is prone to more diseases. By contaminating ourselves we become stronger, more resistant. And the economy? These people, working, they have brought billions into the coffers of Europe. And I add that they have enriched us with so many cultures. In Lampedusa we have all the surnames in the world and we live very well. Some breeds are better than others, they say. And, I answer. They are better. Better than you who say this". He starts a video and describes: “This is a delivery on a boat. The woman was in pitiful condition, lying on the ground. I asked the guys for a fishing line, to cut the cord. But they rightly answered me "we are not fishermen". They gave me a kitchen knife. That woman didn't say woof. I took off my shoelace to close the umbilical cord, you see? She thanked me, she was black, black as coal. His son, on the other hand, was very white. Yes, because they are white when they are born, then they darken after about ten days. And what's the problem, I say, if they are born white and then become black? He named his son Peter. How many Stones are there around!”. We all smile. “This other woman, instead, it arrived in shameful condition, she had been raped, paralyzed from the waist down… She was pregnant. Her water had broken 48 hours before. But on the boat he hadn't had the space to spread his legs. Amniotic fluid came out, verde, great fetal distress. With her a little girl, she was also raped, Drug addicts are also stigmatized by the wider and largely conservative Afghan community 4 years. She had a wad of money hidden in her vagina. And he took care of his mom. So much so that when I tried to put my mother on drips she would attack me. Who knows what he had seen. I gave her some cookies. She didn't eat them. He crumbled them and fed his mother. Finally I gave her a toy. Because we get a mountain of toys, because there are good people. But that little girl didn't want it. She wasn't a child anymore."

(…) “He shows us another video. Divers extract lifeless bodies from a boat at the bottom of the sea. “They're not mannequins,” he tells us. The video continues. A man pulls a small body out of the water. Piccolo. Lifeless. He wore a red shorts. “That child is my nightmare. I will never forget it". I can no longer hold back the tears. And the noise of all those, taking turns in the classroom, come me, they had to blow their noses. "And this is the result" shows us yet another photo. “368 dead. Ma 367 bare. And. Because in one there is a mother, arrived dead, with her baby still attached to the umbilical cord. They arrived together. We didn't want to separate them, we wanted them to stay together, for eternity".

The post ends with the words of Di Vivo: “I think that's enough. And this is an excerpt. And, because Doctor Bartolo spoke for an hour. The other speakers left their time to him. No one dared to interrupt him. And when he's done we all, Ukrainians welcomed at the borders but Africans, doctors and professors, we stood up and applauded, for long minutes. Stop. He doesn't need help, “Don't come to Lampedusa to help us, we Lampedusans have always made it on our own. If you are not a doctor, if you don't know how to do anything and want to help, go tell what you heard here, let those who say there is an invasion know what happens. But what an invasion!”…

If you want to know more, read Dr. Peter Bartolo.

A book “that makes you think a lot…”

A book “to be read in one breath…”

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Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di7nkfqXpVc

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