He would have committed suicide by hanging Dr. Giuseppe De Donno, father of the hyperimmune plasma treatment to fight Covid. Now the prosecutor has opened an investigation to understand what happened: family members have already been questioned and phones and computers seized. But who was the Mantuan doctor?
He spent his life in the hospital wards of Mantua as head physician, together with his colleague Massimo Franchini, of the Immunohematology and Transfusional Department of Carlo Apple, before leaving everything and devoting himself to general medicine in Porto Mantovano, a few kilometers beyond the city limits. This is why the Mantuan people still cannot believe in the death of Giuseppe De Donno, 54 years old: yesterday afternoon Tuesday 27 July he committed suicide in his house in Curtatone where he lived with his family, his wife Laura and their two children Martina and Edoardo.
An investigation into his death opened
Twenty-four hours after his death, the Mantua Public Prosecutor’s Office opened aninvestigation on the death of the doctor: from the first information it would seem that the doctor is hanged in the afternoon when no one was home. Meanwhile, the carabinieri, already yesterday evening, heard the family – his wife and two children – to try to understand the reason for the gesture. The doctor in fact would not have left no ticket. The military then seized De Donno’s cell phones and computer.
His primary career
A life dedicated to medicine: as the local newspapers report, De Donno after a diploma from classical high school, yes Graduation in medicine and surgery at the University of Modena with 110 cum laude. After passing the state exam, he continued his studies specializing in 1996 in physiopathology and respiratory allergology. His career work began in 1992 with my first assignment in the Diseases Department of the Respiratory System of the Polyclinic of the University of Modena. His first position of responsibility came in 2010 when for three years he was the head of a structure that deals with patients who require home mechanical ventilation. The leap into his career came in 2013 when he became medical director of the complex structure of Pneumology and Utir (respiratory intensive unit) of Asst Carlo Poma.
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The cure of hyperimmune plasma
But not only Mantua: De Donno becomes one of the best known doctors in Italy because he experiments and proposes hyperimmune plasma therapy to fight Covid, defining it himself “a magic weapon“. World medicine then did not consider this treatment to be the most suitable for defeating the virus: already in November 2020 a study carried out by the Italian Hospital of Buenos Aires and published in the New England Journal of Medicine explained that the use of plasma hyperimmune on patients suffering from Covid-19 it had no effect. In the meantime, however, to carry out the experimentation in Italy, the University of Pavia was chosen with which Mantua will be able to obtain a simple collaboration. De Donno believed in it: he had already reiterated during the first months of the pandemic that his only goal was to create plasma banks around Italy so as to stem other waves of the virus. According to Dr. De Donno “each of the healed donates just over half a liter of blood but, from now on, obstacles seem to be arising in order to use it”. The treatment was in fact both criticized and appreciated: if on the one hand there have been Covid patients treated with the plasma who thanked the doctor on the other hand there is a scientific community that has never ascertained and confirmed the effectiveness of this experimentation. Now the questions are all focused on what happened yesterday afternoon and what prompted the Mantuan doctor to commit such a gesture. Him that many friends remember him as a great fan of football and cycling. As well as the sea of Salento.