(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 15 - 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". (ANSA).