Record numbers of Italians are travelling abroad for medical treatment, patient figures released on Thursday showed.
Around 5,000 Italian 'health tourists' filed requests in 2005 to receive treatment abroad, the majority of them from Italy's underdeveloped southern regions, the European organisation Active Citizenship Network (ACN) said.
Almost 40% were from the region of Campania around Naples and nearly 10% from Sicily, said the ACN, which is a European network of citizens' rights groups.
The ACN noted a simultaneous drop in the number of foreigners coming here for treatment, saying that for every European travelling to Italy for health assistance in 2006, 150 Italians went abroad against a ratio of 1-54 in 2000.
France was the most popular destination for Italians (50% of cases) followed by Belgium and Switzerland (both 14%).
Most of the patients went for major operations, in particular organ transplants, and cancer treatment.
The ACN stressed that it was not only lack of confidence in homegrown healthcare that was driving Italians abroad.
It said one of the main causes was Italy's poor record on patient rights.
ACN noted that Friday was European Patients' Rights Day, an initiative that was first introduced in 2007.
It called on all European countries to actively mark the day and promote efforts to get a European Charter of Patients' Rights approved.
Public confidence in Italy's health service has been recently undermined by a string of errors and apparently avoidable deaths, particularly in the south.
In once case in May 2007, at least four patients died after being given laughing gas instead of oxygen during operations at a hospital in the southern region of Puglia.
In another headline case last year, a 16-year-old girl in Calabria entered a fatal coma when a power cut occurred during her appendicitis operation.
Meanwhile, three patients at a Tuscan hospital were given transplants using organs from an HIV-positive donor.
Every year, between 4,500-7,000 patients die in Italy because of infections contracted while in hospital.
Hospital infections are considered a factor in another 21,000 patient deaths while up to 700,000 patients contract non-fatal infections.
Reports of poor hygiene and low safety standards sparked a nationwide inspection of public hospitals in January 2007.
Less than half were given a clean bill of health, with 36.4% reported for breaching administrative norms, 17.4% for breaching building norms and 7.5% for breaching hygiene and cleanliness norms.
Southern regions were found to be the worst, with hospitals in Sicily, Calabria, Lazio around Rome and Campania around Naples proving the least hygienic.
