Emergency Clinic in Naples: A Decade of Essential Healthcare in Ponticelli
Naples, January 28 – The Emergency clinic in the Ponticelli district of Naples marks ten years of operation, having assisted approximately 12,000 individuals and delivered over 75,000 services since 2015. This initiative serves as a crucial model for territorial medicine in Southern Italy, addressing the growing challenges of healthcare access, including a shortage of general practitioners and pediatricians, fragmented care pathways, and an increasing reliance on private healthcare.
A Comprehensive Approach to Community Health
Emergency’s fixed clinic in Ponticelli offers a multifaceted approach to patient care, encompassing general medicine, nursing services, psychological support, and cultural mediation. These services are vital for individuals who face barriers to accessing the National Health Service and local social services. The clinic’s integrated model ensures that patients receive holistic support, guiding them through the complex healthcare system and connecting them with appropriate social services.
Since its inception in 2015, clinical services, including general and pediatric medicine, have accounted for the majority of interventions (42%). Cultural mediation activities have also been significant (34%), crucial for overcoming linguistic, bureaucratic, and administrative hurdles. Nursing activities, such as administering therapies, dressings, and vital sign monitoring, represent 21% of services, while psychological support accounts for 2%.
Sergio Serraino, Emergency’s Campania coordinator, emphasized the importance of this model: “Thanks to the activities carried out within the fixed clinic, which puts patient care at its center, listening and then guiding them through the complex healthcare system and social support requests, Emergency in Ponticelli has demonstrated how proximity medicine in the area is still possible, but above all, necessary and functional to the needs of the population.”
Addressing Social Inequalities in an Urban Periphery
Naples Ponticelli is characterized by social inequalities and a structural lack of accessible healthcare services. In 2025, approximately 200 people sought assistance from Emergency’s social desk, which opened in November 2023. Administrative issues, such as obtaining residence permits, constituted 63% of the needs, while 30% related to enrollment in Italian language courses, access to education, or referrals to social services. Work-related problems accounted for 11%, and housing issues for 8%.
Emanuela Carlucci, an Emergency social worker, highlighted the ongoing challenges: “As Emergency, we find the need for greater support for the care of the most vulnerable people. Our work focuses in particular on administrative orientation, accompanying them in the regularization process, through the practice of the residence permit and facilitating access to local health and social services, whose process can be complex. Among the needs that have emerged, such as those related to work and housing, there are still no concrete responses from the territory, and therefore difficulties in being able to orient the people who turn to us.”
A Hub of Community and Trust
“In Ponticelli, the clinic has become a meeting place and a community, a real neighborhood square,” added Serraino. “Since 2015, the intervention has been designed in relation to the territory, where there was no accessible healthcare offering for everyone, while the vulnerability of users grew. In that context, Emergency chose to be there, building, step by step, relationships with patients and institutions, creating a relationship of trust with people who always return to our clinic. As long as inequalities in access to health are recorded in the territory, Emergency’s commitment will continue.”
Over the past decade, the ONG has welcomed 11,841 people, observing that access to the National Health Service and social services is becoming increasingly complex. Economic, linguistic, and administrative barriers often hinder access and continuity of care, health protection, and social dignity.
The patients attending the Naples Ponticelli clinic include Italian and foreign citizens, families, minors, and the elderly. Patients have come from 116 countries. Among the top ten nationalities, in addition to Italy (23%), are Romania (9%), Morocco (9%), Bangladesh (7%), and Nigeria (8%), followed by Ukraine, Senegal, and Algeria.
Regarding administrative status, patients include non-EU citizens without residence permits (32%), non-EU citizens with residence permits (30%), Italian citizens (22%), European citizens without the requirements for National Health Service registration (11%), and European citizens with the requirements for National Health Service registration (1%).
A notable trend in recent years has been the increase in patients over 60, often living alone, with mobility difficulties, and without a referring doctor. In 2025, the majority of users were between 18 and 40 years old (41%), followed by 41 to 60 years old (31%), over 60 years old (18%), and children between 0-5 years (2%), 6-14 years (4%), and 15-17 years (2%). Men represented 64% of patients, while women accounted for 36%.
An Evolving Model for Inclusive Healthcare
Crescenzo Caiazza, an Emergency nurse in Naples Ponticelli, explained the clinic’s evolution: “In ten years, the clinic has grown and transformed, becoming an interdisciplinary and low-threshold care space that today offers linguistic-cultural mediation and socio-health orientation, migration medicine with prescriptions, pediatrics, psychological desk, social desk, and an experimentation with general practitioners. A place capable of fostering dialogue between the world of people registered with the National Health Service and that of STP (Temporarily Present Foreigner) and ENI (Non-Registered European) people, often excluded from ordinary care pathways.”
“The hope is that the experience of Ponticelli can be recognized as a space of opportunity and inspiration: a replicable model of proximity medicine,” concluded Serraino, “capable of strengthening territorial medicine and making the right to health concrete. For this reason, we have formally asked the new President of the Region, Roberto Fico, to visit our space as soon as possible.”
The Naples clinic is part of Emergency Italia, the program through which the ONG upholds the right to care enshrined in the Constitution. In addition to Naples Ponticelli and Castel Volturno, Emergency operates mobile and fixed clinics in Sicily (Ragusa area), Sardinia (Sassari), Calabria (Rosarno, Polistena, and San Ferdinando), Veneto (Marghera), and Lombardy (Milan and Brescia).
The Emergency clinic in Naples, located at Via Pacioli 95, is open Monday to Thursday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM and from 1:30 PM to 5:30 PM, and on Fridays from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM. Further information and contact details are available online.
Source: https://napoli.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/26_gennaio_28/ambulatorio-emergency-napoli-dieci-anni-di-attivita-a-ponticelli-per-dodicimila-assistiti-come-e-dove-9919a6fa-91e3-488f-8409-30d3b8febxlk.shtml
