A total of 51 doctors who tested positive for COVID-19 have succumbed to the disease as of Friday.
Filippo Anelli, president of the Italian Association of Doctors, had recently called for doctors in the country to be provided with more personal protective equipment (PPE), noting that the possibly preventable deaths have taken a heavy toll on the profession.
“The first thing to do is to protect healthcare workers, to make sure they are not the ones spreading the virus.
Our doctors have been sent to war unarmed,” Anelli said.
“The dead do not make a noise. Yet, the names of our dead friends, our colleagues, put here in black and white, make a deafening noise.”
Italy has the highest COVID-19 death toll of any country in the world, with over 10 percent of cases resulting in death so far.
