(Picture: Italy’s former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Emanuela Del Re visits the UN deposit in Brindisi in February 2019. Source: Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, official website).
by Alessandro Pagano Dritto (Twitter: @paganodritto)
[April 5th, 2021] Italy has resumed deliveries of UN medical equipments for the first time after late 2019, as 10 tons of material have reached out Tripoli on April 4th, 2021.
Equipment was stored in the UN deposit in Brindisi, Southern Italy, and 1 million anti covid masks were included, Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs communicated, stressing fight against COVID 19 was the main intended reason of the delivery. However, along with such a material, “emergency health kits, surgery equipments and medicines for non-communicable deseases” were also part of the shipment, the Ministry added.
Latest medical delivery of UN material from Italy was carried out in September 2019, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows, when the same amount as April 2021, 10 tons, was delivered from the same UN deposit in Brindisi.
Further deliveries also occurred through early 2020; yet, they were not strictly medical, rather reaching internal displaced people with general assistance kits in January 2020 – twice – February 2020, April 2020, May 2020, the Agency for Cooperation in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows. More recently, on March 31st, 2021, the Italian Embassy in Tripoli has announced the second phase of “Solidariety Bridge” was launched, aimed at supporting 24 unnamed Libyan municipalities through “10 million euros of cocrete and urgent supplies”; yet, no concrete action of a such has been announced since then and it seems unlikely the April 4th delivery of UN equipments can be intended as part of the initiative.
A request for the Italian medical facilities in Misrata to treat Covid 19 was submitted to Italy by the now expired UN-backed Government of National Agreement (GNA) back in early May 2020 and announced by Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio later that month; yet, it’s not clear whether and how the turning have materilized at time of writing.
[Read about both GNA requesting for the Italian medical facilities in Misrata to treat Covid 19 and Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio vowing such a treatment in May 2020, on Between Libya and Italy]
Latest delivery of mainly anti-covid UN equipments comes at a time when Russia’s first batch ever of Sputnik anti-covid vaccine reaches out Tripoli, the Ministry of Healthcare in the newly appointed UN-backed Government of National Unity (GNU) has showed.
Between Libya And Italy 