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July 27, 2021 A bolt from the blue that has thrown into mourning not only the Mantuan medicine but also many ordinary people who had seen in him a lifeline in the storm of Covid.



Giuseppe De Donno, the former head of pulmonology at the Carlo Poma hospital in Mantua, who was the first to start Covid treatment with hyperimmune plasma transfusions, the controversial therapy that involved the 'blood infusion of coronavirus infected patients, appropriately treated, in other infected patients. His body was found in his home in Eremo, a hamlet of the Municipality of Curtatone, by some family members.



De Donno was 54 years old and had resigned from the Mantua hospital in the first days of June to begin, on 5 July, the new profession of general practitioner in Porto Mantovano. The circumstances of the death are still unclear.



The former primary lived with his wife Laura and two children, Martina, a municipal councilor in Curtatone, and Edoardo. There are many certificates of condolence from many citizens astonished by his disappearance, who remembered De Donno for having "saved many lives" with his therapy.   



De Donno, together with Massimo Franchini, head of Immunohematology and Transfusion at Carlo Poma, had begun to treat patients with Covid who arrive exhausted at Poma with hyperimmune plasma therapy. In short, this practice had become the only weapon against the coronavirus in the spring of last year, at least in the initial stages of the disease. In a short time he became the best known primary in Italy, disputed as he was by newspapers and television broadcasts. Not everyone, however, in the field of medicine was convinced of this and so much controversy arose over De Donno. However, he held out and managed to get an experimentation of his method with the University of Pavia. In the end, however, official medicine did not believe that this was the most suitable cure for Covid,even if many recovered by binding forever with eternal gratitude to the primary Mantua. Giuseppe De Donno became acting head physician of the Carlo Poma Pneumology in September 2018 and then in December of the same year he won the competition as effective primary.   



De Donno was also known outside the hospital environment for having been vice mayor of Curtatone in the past. Graduated from high school, he graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Modena with 110 cum laude. After his university studies he completed his training through several specialization courses in pathophysiology and respiratory allergology, reaching specialization in 1996. From 2010 to 2013 he was in charge of the simple structure "High intensity respiratory home care program for patients dependent on home mechanical ventilation "and in 2013 he became medical director of the complex structure of Pneumology and Utir (respiratory intensive unit) of Asst Carlo Poma. 



Dismayed the mayor of Curtatone, Carlo Bottani, a close friend of the doctor, who interprets the sentiment of an entire community in shock: "Giuseppe was an extraordinary person - he said in tears -. I had the privilege of being at his side in the first phase of the lockdown and I saw how much he spent on his patients. History will remember him for the good he did. "