The conditions required to treat this virus have made things even more difficult for patients, and the doctors working to save their lives.
The first thing Damiano Rizzi told me was the story of a woman who was about to die. It wasn’t Rizzi’s own story — it was a story that another doctor had shared during a staff meeting. That doctor had been standing beside her patient’s bed. Before the patient closed her eyes, she stretched out her hand and placed it on the plastic visor that shielded her doctor’s face, as if looking for a last, desperate human touch.
Rizzi is the president of the health care NGO Soleterre, which works on human rights issues around health care. He’s also a psychologist at the San Matteo hospital in Pavia, one of the first cities affected by the COVID-19 emergency in Italy. He uses that doctor’s story as a portrait of what is happening in the wards of thousands of hospitals around the world. “This virus has created a very strong sense of loneliness,” he says. “Doctors covered from head to toe in synthetic suits are the only link to real life for intubated patients, or imprisoned ones in oxygen helmets, often unable to say a word.” For this reason, he and his team are on the front line, alongside the health personnel in the COVID-19 and intensive care units of the San Matteo hospital, to try to bring psychological support to this hell. “We have been on the war front, in the Balkans, in the Donbass in Ukraine, in the refugee camps in northern Uganda. When the coronavirus emergency broke out, I felt it was important to be here…”
To read the entire article from Slate, click https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/coronavirus-italy-mental-health.html
