Aim:To discuss the development of the family and community health nurse (FCHN) in Italy by focusing on three levels: organisational, political and theoretical.Background:The role of the FCHN in Italy is not yet embedded evenly across the Italian National Health System (INHS) and does not have formal recognition, either contractually or organisationally. Hiring a badante is not only less costly than other care providing schemes 3 , it is also more practical because they ensure long hours of care (badanti are often complementary to public services, which are not organized to give care on a 24 hour basis or in the long term 4 ), they are flexible (arrangements can be made over the 24 hours) and assist people at home 5 The use of a badante has become a common practice in Italy, even by less affluent families, and supply has raised demand (Colombo 2005).
In 1959 Augusto Giovanardi, director of the Institute of Hygiene in Milan, published the preliminary results of the experimentation in Italy of the Sabin attenuated vaccine 39 The results seemed to be extremely positive and the medical community was convinced of the need to start a mass vaccination campaign using OPV.



Amnesty International is concerned that Italy is failing to fully consider appropriate alternatives to detention, as well as failing Badante Roma to apply detention as a 'last resort' for family unit as required by the CRC with respect to the detention of minors.
In order to improve the organization of palliative care and to ensure integrated management and an adequate response to the patients' needs, monitoring tools must be developed to evaluate and improve the activities and processes of home care through more findings and interdisciplinary research studies (especially on the processes and outcomes) of international recognition 36 , 37 , as the same are essential to development and continuous improvement of HPCSs 41 , especially in a complex sector such as palliative care, which has only recently been recognized as an official discipline in Italy.

This Institute played a major role in the treatment and rehabilitation of polio patients in the following decades 9 A special law for "the assistance and the care of poor patients affected with the sequelae of acute anterior poliomyelitis" was issued by the Fascist government on June 10, 1940, in the same session that declared war on Great Britain and France.
From the analysis briefly described above, it is possible to deduce the role of the FCHN in Italy, as professionals provided with their own skills and autonomy oriented towards providing care for people - mainly chronically ill and older people - through preventative measures and interventions, in close collaboration with GPs.
An analysis of this case study can illustrate the impact of an epidemic of a severe disease on individual and collective life, and at the same time the efficacy of public health measures against it, and the importance of the social structure, state and private, in coping with the consequences of the epidemics.

About two-thirds of the web survey respondents were nurses employed in district agencies, while one-third of the respondents were nurses who, at the time of the survey, had completed or were in the process of completing a post-basic training course in family and community health nursing or a similar programme.