Opinions on the Italian national health care post-COVID crisis 2020, by macro-region

The Italian national health care underwent a huge challenge when the country was the first in Europe to be severely hit by COVID-19. A survey conducted in June 2020 attempted to find out what the opinions of Italian citizens were concerning the way the national health care faced the challenge and the structural issues it shed light on, and to check for eventual differences in these opinions by macro-region. This level of analysis seems appropriate as the national health care in Italy is organized by regions, with different levels of efficiency.

Residents of the North-East seemed to be the most content with the current state of their public health system. 30 percent of them believed the system stood up to the COVID-19 challenge and the percentage of respondents who declared the need for increased hospital capacity and modernization was lower than in the other macro-regions. People from Sicily and Sardinia were the most concerned with the state of hospitals, with 59 percent of respondents asserting the government should strengthen their capacity. In the North-West, the Italian macro-region with the highest number of casualties due to COVID-19, as much as 17 percent of the respondents believed the national health care did not stand up to the challenge. For residents of the Center, very pressing issues were the allocation of additional funds to public health (57 percent) and higher salaries to the medical staff (30 percent).