(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 12 - A hospital doctor was attacked at Lamezia Terme in Calabria Tuesday in the latest in a string of assaults on medical staff in Italy.
    ER chief Rosarino Procopio had just explained to relatives that a woman was OK to leave when one of the three relatives took out a concealed cosh and hit him on the back, hospital sources said.
    The local health agency said it expected a "strong response from the authorities" while the president of the National Federation of the Orders of Surgeons and Dentists (Fnomceo), Filippo Anelli, said "we're fed up with solidarity, we want checks to be made and citizens prevented from entering health facilities with weapons".
    On October 14 an ER nurse in the hospital of Agordo near Belluno was punched by a patient after she refused to give her methadone in the latest of the series of acts of violence against healthcare personnel in Italy.
    In September the government upped jail time for people attacking medical staff to a maximum of five years as part of a new decree approved by the cabinet to address the wave of assaults on doctors and other hospital personnel throughout the country. (ANSA).