Pietro Bartolo is an Italian doctor and politician who was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2019 on the Democratic Party list. He is known to have been, from 1992 to 2019, the responsible medician for first visits to migrants who land in Lampedusa: in 25 years he examined and cared for about 250,000 refugees on the island.
Education and early career
Bartolo is a medical surgeon who graduated from the University of Catania, specialized in gynecology. Appointed in 1988 head of the medical cabinet of the Italian Air Force in Lampedusa, in 1991 he was health officer of the Pelagie Islands. In 1993 he became responsible for the health service and the outpatient clinic of Lampedusa, under the control of the Healt District of Palermo.
Political career
Career in local politics
Bartolo was a town councillor in the municipality of Lampedusa e Linosa from 1988 to 2007, and was vice mayor and health councillor of the municipality of Pelagie from 1988 to 1993. Since 1992, he has also been taking care of the first visits to all the migrants who land in Lampedusa from Africa and those who stay in the reception centre. In March 2011 he was appointed coordinator of all health activities in the Pelagian Islands by the then Health Councillor of the Sicilian Region Massimo Russo. Despite having been hit by a cerebral ischaemia a few weeks earlier, he was in the front row in rescuing the survivors of the Lampedusa Shipwreck of 3 October 2013 of a fishing boat carrying over 500 migrants, in which 368 people lost their lives. He takes part in the documentary film Fire at Sea by Gianfranco Rosi, which in February 2016 won the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards. A supporter of the reception of immigrants and asylum seekers and of the need for humanitarian corridors against human trafficking, he took part as a guest in several Italian television programmes. In July 2019, having placed himself on leave for the parliamentary term, he was replaced at the head of the outpatient clinic in Lampedusa by former MP Francesco Cascio. In the 2018 Italian general election, Free and Equal announced his candidacy in the Senate, but in the end Bartolo renounced it. Then he joined Solidary Democracy in February 2019.
