HEALTHCARE workers are being guarded by the army at an Italian hospital, following a string of attacks on medics. 

The surveillance has been approved by Prefect Paolo Giovanni Grieco to monitor the hospital and other “sensitive targets” in the Calabrian town of Vibo Valential, local media have reported.

Nationwide violence on hospital staff was sparked after the death of a 23-year-old woman, who died during emergency surgery in early September, at Policlinico hospital in the southern city of Foggia. 

Relatives and friends of the woman turned their grief into violence, and began attacking workers at the facility.

Video footage, widely circulated on social media, showed doctors and nurses barricading themselves in a room to escape the attack.

Some of them were punched and injured. 

A wave of attacks has since followed, prompting the doctors’ national guild to request army presence to ensure medical staff safety.

Antonio De Palma, president of the Nursing Up union, said: “We have never seen such levels of aggression in the past decade.

“We are now at a point where considering military protection in hospitals is no longer a far-fetched idea.”