Call for army to protect Italian hospital staff after spate of attacks

Outrage as patients and relatives turn on doctors and nurses, with 16,000 reports of assaults in 2023 alone

Doctors' and nurses' unions in Italy have called for authorities to consider bringing the army into hospitals in response to an increase in attacks by patients and their relatives that provoked outrage across the country.

In one of the latest, captured on video and widely shared on social media, doctors and nurses were forced to barricade themselves in a room at the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, in the southern region of Puglia, on Friday after about 50 relatives and friends of a 23-year-old woman who died after an emergency operation turned on medical staff. Some healthcare workers were injured, with bloodstains visible on the emergency room floor.