In 1978 in Bologna, Professor Franco Pannuti launched the ANT experience, now Fondazione ANT Italia Onlus, the largest non-profit organisation for specialised home care for cancer patients and free cancer prevention. In over forty years of activity, ANT has treated over 170,000 people in 12 Italian regions, assisting over 10,000 people each year in their homes through multi-disciplinary teams that ensure specialised hospital, psychological and social care. Lucrezia Lanzani interviews Raffaella Pannuti, chairman of Fondazione ANT for FARE INSIEME Charity
FARE INSIEME CHARITY is the spin-off of the FARE INSIEME project dedicated to the presentation of some onlus and non-profit associations with roots in the area around Bologna, Ferrara and Modena and that carry out extraordinarily important and crucial work for the entire community. Here are some of their stories
by Lucrezia Lanzani*
“Assistance: providing one’s work or care to those in need, bringing, where necessary, comfort, help, relief.”
On the 15th May 1978, the primary oncologist of the Sant’Orsola Malpighi hospital, Franco Pannuti, decided that he no longer wanted to limit himself to hospital activity and launched the National Association for the study and treatment of Solid Tumours, investing 20 million lire received from various sponsorships of pharmaceutical companies. To do this, he decided to ask for help from people who came “from the streets”: ordinary people who wanted to be involved and engaged in the fight against tumours. «Franco Pannuti, my father, was not only an oncologist, but he was also a great scholar with a great ambition: he wanted to be close to people. So, he and 12 other collaborators gathered in front of a notary to sign the pact of honour against cancer, and that’s how the association was born», says Raffaella Pannuti, who has been with the Fondazione ANT since 1998 and is now its chairman. The Foundation was born as a research centre in the industrial chemistry department, to study the path of drugs inside the human body. Thus, the collaboration with the pharmacokinetic metabolism laboratory was born and the magazine “Ricerca 2000” was published.
«In 1984, my grandfather, his father-in-law, died assisted by my father and a paid nurse. From family experiences like this, in 1985, home care began. Our belief is summarised in the term Eubiosia, from the Greek, ‘the good life’, and for this reason we have always provided free medical-specialist assistance to cancer patients at their homes. Since 2004, we have also been carrying out cancer prevention activities. The Foundation has also become part of the European groups on active ageing and we are continuously working on projects to keep up with the times», Raffaella Pannuti continues. To date, ANT offers assistance to those suffering from advanced and very advanced cancer and is the largest third sector organisation that deals with palliative care in Italy. The Foundation operates free of charge in 170 points, divided into 12 regions, assisting approximately 3 thousand cancer sufferers per day, for a total of over 10 thousand per year. This is possible thanks to donations, in fact only less than 20% of the funds come from agreements with the local health authorities (ASL), while the rest comes from donations, events, demonstrations and crowd-funding activities. This means that ANT invests 80% of the resources collected in public health.
In addition to assistance to caregivers and family members of patients, the Foundation deals with research on the topic of pain, on assistance models and artificial intelligence and, as mentioned, on the prevention, offering approximately 22 thousand free visits per year. Furthermore, the Foundation is present in schools of all levels with training activities on prevention, solidarity, assistance and, for older children, also mourning, intervening on both students and teachers. But how is the impact of ANT's work measured? In 2016, the Foundation tried to quantify the impact of the assistance model on the territory and the value of each euro collected, then transformed into services with a value that was almost doubled. In 2021, the Theory of change was used and research showed that, where home care was available, the health system saved around 4,500 euros in medical/nursing services, compared to 1,500 euros of investment, to which family care expenses are added. «One day, a lady came to me and said: “Doctor, I have to thank you because my mother, who has just died, at 90 years old couldn’t walk and went back and forth to the hospital; until, thank goodness, they discovered a tumour in her and you intervened. In the end, she died peacefully and not from that disease.” Examples like this, if we want to talk about impact, thanks to ANT are repeated for 10 thousand people a year» highlights Pannuti. ANT is based on two pillars: the volunteers, guarantors of the idea of Eubiosia and supporters of care, and the professionals, doctors, nurses and psychologists who have a dignity of work.
«I would like to make people understand the burden, including the psychological burden, that my collaborators and I carry: I have 500 people on my payroll because I assist 10 thousand people a year: psychologically it is no small thing to find the funds every month to be able to guarantee the constant assistance to patients. As long as I can assist them, I will do it, I don't care if the patient doesn't have a home or a GP. As long as I can, I will do it», the chairman of Fondazione ANT proudly remarks. In the future of ANT, there is also a proposed law to implement the professionalism of nurses so that they can help guarantee assistance in the territory, but to do so, 50 thousand signatures need to be collected.
«It takes 10 years to train a doctor, for a year we have been working to train nurses to go to people's homes and intervene directly. Third sector entities are precursors, civil society gathers in groups because it sees a need that public healthcare has not covered. At this point, a question arises: when an elderly person finds him/herself with a sick spouse, would it be better for him/her to try to resolve the situation with a phone call or to receive assistance at home from a nurse? We will propose a law to give these family members the opportunity to never feel alone again. Loneliness is the greatest ally of suffering», concludes Raffaella Pannuti.
*Lucrezia Lanzani is a student at the Steam Emilia High School. She is seventeen years old and has always been interested in social issues. She has been volunteering for three years in different organisations in her community
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