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HEALTH

‘The pain of an entire nation’: Italy marks first day of remembrance for Covid-19 dead

Prime Minister Mario Draghi paid tribute on Thursday to the more than 103,000 people in Italy who have died of Covid-19, as the country marked its first national day of remembrance for victims for the pandemic.

'The pain of an entire nation': Italy marks first day of remembrance for Covid-19 dead
(Photo by Miguel MEDINA / AFP)

Draghi travelled to Bergamo, the northern province that became Europe’s first major virus flashpoint a year ago, for Italy’s first annual day of mourning for the dead.

“We cannot hug each other, but this is the day in which we must all feel even closer,” he said at the inauguration of a memorial park near the main hospital in the city of Bergamo.

“This place is a symbol of the pain of an entire nation,” he said, before witnessing the planting of one of the park’s planned 850 trees to the mournful sounds of a trumpet.

Earlier, Draghi laid a wreath at Bergamo’s cemetery and observed a minute of silence, while across the nation flags flew at half mast from all public buildings.

Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP

Italy chose March 18th for its coronavirus remembrance day to coincide with the day in 2020 when the army had to step in to carry away scores of coffins from Bergamo’s overwhelmed crematorium. 

At the height of the pandemic last year, Father Marco Bergamelli was blessing coffins every ten minutes.

“This place was full of coffins, there were 132 lined up at the foot of the altar,” he told AFP, opening the doors of the church at the monumental cemetery. “At the beginning, the trucks came at night, nobody was supposed to know the coffins were being taken elsewhere.”

READ ALSO: ‘Here is the Italy that has suffered’: Bergamo holds requiem for coronavirus dead

The camouflaged vehicles took away up to 70 coffins a day from the church, where they were collected after the local mortuaries filled up. The coffins were transported to cemeteries in other northern cities such as Bologna and Ferrara.

Many of the bodies that remained in Bergamo were buried in haste, often without headstones but with signs bearing photos and names of the deceased.

Almost everyone here lost a member of their family, a friend, colleague, or neighbour.

ICUs are full once again

In March 2020 alone, 670 people died in this city of 120,000 inhabitants and almost 6,000 in the province of the same name — five or six times the normal toll for that time of year.

“People saw their loved ones leave in an ambulance with a fever, and they were returned as ashes in an urn, without ever being able to say goodbye,” said Bergamelli, 66.

“It was like wartime.”

READ ALSO: Twelve statistics that show how the pandemic has hit Italy’s quality of life

A grim sense of deja vu pervades the area, as the city is once again locked down along with most of the country amid a fresh wave of infections.

A parish priest stands by coffins stored in the church of San Giuseppe in Seriate, near Bergamo, Lombardy, on March 26, 2020. Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP

At the Seriate hospital east of the city, the intensive care unit is once again at capacity, its eight beds occupied by coronavirus patients, even if numbers are lower than last year.

“Covid is more aggressive now, with many cases of the new English variant,” said Roberto Keim, the unit’s director.

READ ALSO: Codogno one year on: How is the first Italian town hit by coronavirus faring?

‘The people of Bergamo felt abandoned’

There are many here who criticise authorities for acting too slowly to recognise the scale of the crisis last year and not imposing swift restrictions to stem the virus’s spread, including banning gatherings.

“At the beginning of March, we saw people going to funerals for victims of Covid, and themselves dying a few weeks later,” said Roberta Caprini of the Generli Funeral Home.

The 38-year-old was left to manage unprecedented demand for the family business after her father and uncle both contracted coronavirus. They later recovered.

“Normally, we organise about 1,400 burials a year. But in March 2020, we did 1,000,” she said.

To allow relatives in quarantine to say their final goodbyes, Caprini had the hearse pass underneath their balconies, and took photos of the dead herself.

But proper mourning was impossible for many. “We spent a month not knowing where my father’s body was,” said Luca Fusco, recalling the 85-year-old’s death in a care home on March 11th 2020.

READ ALSO: How are countries across Europe faring in the battle against Covid-19?

Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP

Fusco’s son Stefano created a Facebook group demanding justice for the dead, which now has 70,000 members.

The group “Noi Denunceremo” (We Will Denounce), led by Luca Fusco, has already filed more than 250 complaints with prosecutors over the way authorities handled the Covid crisis. A judicial enquiry is underway.

It took two weeks after the first cases appeared in the province on February 23rd last year for the authorities to lock down the entire Lombardy region, a measure extended one day later to the whole of Italy.

Fusco claims nobody wanted to shut down a region that is the engine of Italy’s economy.

“The people of Bergamo felt abandoned. In acting sooner, the authorities could have saved thousands of lives,” he said.

READ ALSO: How will Italy’s Covid-19 strategy change under the new government?

The prime minister also promised no let-up in an ongoing drive to scale up national vaccination efforts, despite the current controversy over the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) was due to clarify on Thursday whether the vaccine is safe after unproven accusations of links to blood clots led to its suspension in much of Europe this week.

“Whatever its decision, the vaccination campaign will continue with the same intensity, with the same objectives,” Draghi said, expressing confidence in ramped-up vaccine supplies. 

Italy’s government has set a target to triple vaccinations to 500,000 per day by mid-April, and to fully vaccinate 80 per cent of the population by mid-September.

At the same time, it put much of the country back into lockdown on Monday to contain a third wave of the virus that has put hospitals under renewed stress and claimed 431 lives on Wednesday alone.

READ MORE: How will the AstraZeneca suspension affect Italy’s vaccine rollout plans?

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HEALTH

‘Behind the times’: Why women in Italy struggle to get menopause treatment

For many women living in Italy, accessing HRT means paying for private treatment and, in some cases, travelling abroad in order to find a doctor willing to prescribe the medication they need.

'Behind the times': Why women in Italy struggle to get menopause treatment

Sitting in her garden in rural Tuscany, Tara Gould, a 55-year-old British national, reminisces about her old job back in the United Kingdom. 

“It was such a support group for people like me, so to be able to work for it and help other women was such a bonus,” Tara says.

The support group Tara worked for was the Latte Lounge, an online community for UK women over the age of 40 going through menopause. The site had resources such as articles, help finding a nearby specialist and in-person events. Tara managed the emails sent in by women who were either asking questions or struggling.

READ ALSO: Public vs private: What are your healthcare options in Italy?

“I had a few women reach out to me who were feeling suicidal and had nowhere to go or no one to ask about what they were going through. Talking to them about their options and helping them out, helped me out too.

But in Italy, she says, “I cannot find any support network like that here.”

In the two years she’s been living here full-time, Tara has had to go back to the UK for her hormone replacement therapy (HRT) which is crucial in managing symptoms such as hot flashes, sleep problems, and low moods. 

“In Italy, it is like what it was like in the UK 30 years ago, and coming from there two years ago was a massive shock to the system,” she adds.

“Women just have to grin and bear it.”

She believes the situation in Italy boils down to a lack of knowledge and possible embarrassment about discussing menopause. While the UK is far from perfect on the issue, she says, there is help available for women needing it, while Italy is “behind the times”.

READ ALSO: Why are medicines so expensive in Italy?

Tara is not alone in feeling this way. A post on the topic in one expat Facebook group this month sparked a lively discussion, attracting hundreds of comments from women in Italy sharing their personal stories, advice, and observations on the differences in menopause treatment between Italy and other countries.

But, she says, continuing to travel back to the UK for this routine treatment is “becoming too expensive for me especially as I’m paying into the SSN here too.

“I shouldn’t have to go back to the UK for this.”

Tara returns to the UK once her medication finishes and forks out around €600 each time she goes: €100 for flights and €500 for the HRT medication via private healthcare. 

“It should be a standard medical procedure, but it isn’t here. I can’t keep on going back to the UK and paying out every time I need something, because it is a need not a want.”

Tara started going back to the UK after her family doctor in Italy told her they didn’t prescribe HRT and advised her to buy it online, go abroad or go to a gynaecologist. 

“I thought it was outrageous that a female doctor was telling me these things, especially someone trained in the medical field advising a patient to buy medication online.

“I don’t feel hopeful,” Tara says.

Without her oestrogen, Tara says her anxiety goes through the roof making everyday life a struggle. She’s too worried she’d be dismissed in the same way her doctor dismissed her if she went to a private gynaecologist here. 

“It’s worrying. I don’t know what I’ll do. There must be someone here, but I don’t know how I feel. They tend to be more city-focused, and if I’m going to Rome I might as well go to the UK,” she adds.

In a recent study named Menopause: Knowledge, attitude and practice among Italian women co-written by Italian biologist Paola Mosconi along with six other researchers, more than half of their study sample (women with menopause) had not received any information about the condition and possible therapies.

Another survey conducted in 2021 found only 7.6 percent of the 1028 Italian women surveyed were on HRT. The majority of them were on herbal remedies.

Whilst a global shortage of HRT was widely reported last year, both the studies found medical expertise in the field of menopause to be only “satisfactory”.

READ ALSO: OPINION: Why Italy’s private healthcare isn’t always worth the cost

This is in spite of the Italian health ministry’s webpage outlining the numerous benefits of hormone therapy for menopausal women, such as improved heart health and a reduced risk of strokes.

Tara says she feels as though the lack of information on this topic trickles down into society, as she has tried talking to her Italian friends about it with little success.

For Liguria-based Noah, from the United States, the experience of obtaining HRT from her doctor was not an easy task.

Like Tara, she finds there is a huge lack of education for practitioners and the general public not just on HRT but around menopause in general, which differs from her experience back home. She also thinks views on it are outdated.

She moved over to Italy four years ago whilst she was going through the change. 

“Our family doctor would not prescribe it and lacked any knowledge around it so she sent us to private clinics instead,” Noah says. “I can laugh about it now, because I finally have it, but it was very frustrating in the beginning.”

Noah and her husband, who is Italian, found out about a doctor in another region who specialised in menopause and whose work on the condition was published in medical journals. She got her HRT from him. Whilst Noah felt very comfortable in his care, she had to stop visiting him because of the distance.

“We went back to our family doctor with literature on the use of HRT and the effects of stopping it abruptly. She then did her own research and now has started prescribing it to me,” Noah says.

Noah largely considers herself lucky. Nevertheless, she has to drive 45 minutes to another town in the region to pick up her prescription.

READ ALSO: ‘Very professional but underequipped’: What readers think of Italy’s hospitals

Tuscany resident Kelly Hodgson, like Noah, has also had to do extensive research into the benefits of HRT before she was prescribed it. She found the process of obtaining her medication extremely time-consuming and disheartening. 

“I had to do all the research myself until finally I found a gynaecologist who is open to HRT,” Kelly explains.

Kelly feels like she should have been able to get HRT from her doctor rather than pay privately. She argues that Italy is advanced in most areas of medical care – but not for menopause.

She thinks a huge reason why doctors are hesitant about giving it out is because they associate it with a high cancer risk.

“There is so much scaremongering,” she continues. “My doctor is female and she point blank said to me no, because I could get cancer, even though I’ve been on the contraceptive pill for years which comes with its own cancer risks.

“I come from a family with osteoporosis so HRT is beneficial to me. If I were in the United Kingdom now, I’d have access to it without having a full gynaecological visit before it’s prescribed.”

Kelly says friends from Turin who are also going through the menopause have had to go privately too, rather than get treatment from their doctor. 

“There has to be more education on menopause here,” Kelly concludes.

For Noah and Kelly at least, their journey to get their medication is within the country. For Tara, unless things change culturally and medically, going abroad is the only option she feels comfortable with.

“The way Italians think about menopause is the old-fashioned way everyone used to think. They view us as grumpy old women rather than looking at the reasons,” Tara says.

“It’s just something you have to deal with. It’s frustrating to say the least.”

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