Italian village forbids residents from becoming ill

Around half of Belcastro’s 1,200 residents are over the age of 65 and the nearest Accident & Emergency (A&E) department is over 45km (28 miles) away, the mayor said.

He added that the A&E was only reachable by a road with a 30kmh (18mph) speed limit.

The village’s on-call doctor surgery is also only open sporadically and offers no cover during weekends, holidays or after hours.

Torchia told Italian TV that it was hard to “feel safe when you know that if you need assistance, your only hope is to make it to [A&E] on time” – and that the roads were almost “more of a risk than any illness”.

As part of the decree, residents have also been ordered “not to engage in behaviours that may be harmful and to avoid domestic accidents”, and “not to leave the house too often, travel or practise sports, and to [instead] rest for the majority of the time”.

It is unclear how these new rules will be enforced, if at all.

The sparsely populated region of Calabria – the tip of Italy’s boot – is one of the country’s poorest.

Political mismanagement and mafia interference have decimated its healthcare system, which was put under special administration from the central government almost 15 years ago.