Peripheries (PERIFERIE)

Press Conference – Thursday, March 26 at 10:30 AM at CSV Lazio

Via Liberiana, 17, 00185 Rome

Urban peripheries today represent some of the places where inequalities in access to healthcare are most evident. In contexts marked by socio-economic vulnerability, housing insecurity, and social marginalization, the right to care risks remaining an abstract principle: logistical, bureaucratic, and cultural barriers make access to local health services more difficult and fragmented. Bastogi and the Idroscalo of Ostia are not exceptions, but rather the tip of the iceberg of a broader process of erosion of the right to health and a gradual disinvestment in public healthcare.

The “Peripheries” Report stems from the field experience of Doctors for Human Rights with the project “A Camper for Rights,” which throughout 2025 has provided basic medical assistance, service orientation, and psychological support to people—both Italian and foreign—living in the Roman peripheries of Bastogi and the Idroscalo of Ostia. The project continues to offer support to those who face the greatest barriers in accessing care.

This report represents the first attempt to describe these realities “from within.” It is not only an analysis based on data: for months, mobile clinic operators have worked in these neighborhoods, meeting people, listening to their stories, and accompanying them in accessing services. The report therefore arises from the direct experience of those who have shared, day by day, the difficulties in accessing healthcare that affect these areas.

Through data, testimonies, and analysis, the “Peripheries” Report documents the conditions of access to healthcare in these contexts and provides a snapshot that goes beyond Rome’s outskirts: what emerges concerns the overall functioning of the healthcare system and the inequalities that still limit the effective realization of the right to health in our country.

The report does not merely describe the critical issues observed, but also proposes possible directions for intervention based on the experience of the mobile clinic, highlighting the need for a more community-based, integrated public health model capable of reaching people where they live

MEDU Press Office – comunicazione@mediciperidirittiumani.org – phone: +39 334 3929765

In 2025—thanks to the support of the Charlemagne Foundation, through the Periferiacapitale programme—Doctors for Human Rights has been able to strengthen and expand the activities of the mobile clinic “A Camper for Rights” in the outskirts of Rome. The intervention is also supported by the Prosolidar Foundation and by the Eight per Thousand funds of the Waldensian Church, which contribute to carrying out the mobile clinic’s activities in other urban contexts of the city as well.