President Sergio Mattarella on Friday
urged people not to rely on the Internet for their health
concerns as if were their trusted doctor.
"There is a non-negligible percentage of people who think that
the earth is flat or there is great alarm among doctors and in
the world of health, for the return of some diseases that seemed
to have been eradicated," the president said in answering a
student's question at the ceremony for the 25th anniversary of
the Permanent Observatory for Young Publishers.
"At your age I had classmates who fell ill with polio, which
disappeared thanks to vaccination, or there was measles that was
a threat and disappeared, but now it is starting to resurface
because we are below the necessary vaccination. "So we must
avoid the risk of relying on the web as if it were a trusted
doctor.
"We are seeing it even these days with dramatic consequences".
A 22-year-old Sicilian woman, Margaret Spada, died this week
four days after having a nose job at an unauthorised Roman
clinic whose ad she found on the Web.
Mattarella also warned youngsters not to become "prisoners of
your cellphones".
In other remarks, the head of state said he was a "referee who
needs the players to help him", that "State powers are not
opposing fortresses", and that "I have sometimes promulgated
laws that I did not agree with".
He also called for "antidotes" to stop young people fleeing
abroad, and stressed that "unity is not the antithesis of
opposition".
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