Pulmonologist Giuseppe De Donno took his own life. The discovery took place in the late afternoon of Tuesday 27 July, when the lifeless body of the doctor was found in his home in Curtatone, near Mantua, in Italy.
Left in shock are the Mantuan community and De Donno’s medical colleagues, who never expected a similar episode to occur. The doctor did not leave any messages, but the causes should be sought both in problems of a personal nature and, perhaps, professional circumstances.
De Donno’s name had hit the headlines during the 2020 lockdown in Italy, when with his colleagues at the Carlo Poma hospital in Mantua he had invested energy and resources in the treatment of Covid by means of hyperimmune plasma. This strategy, however, has been abandoned over time, even in the face of international research and studies on the subject.
For several weeks, after having spent years as head of pneumology at the Mantua hospital, De Donno had been a general practitioner in Porto Mantovano. De Donno in fact had resigned from the city hospital preferring to devote himself to family practice in the municipality on the outskirts of the city.
“We are devastated by what happened, said Raffaello Stradoni. I got to know him in person and I must say that he was a truly exquisite person: honest to the end, he always spent himself for the truth and for others.
“During the first wave of Covid, he gave the best of himself and was really appreciated both by his medical colleagues and by the hundreds of patients whom he served.
“De Donno had also invested heavily in plasma research, a cure which has now been abandoned but which nevertheless had paid off. The abandonment of plasma for other treatments was certainly a very difficult blow for him to manage”.
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