Vanity Fair Italy puts Bergamo doctor on cover of next issue devoted to Italian healthcare heroes

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Mar 24, 2020

Vanity Fair has devoted its next issue to Italian health care workers, and put a lady doctor from Bergamo on its cover.
 
The issue, which comes out Wednesday, March 25, features Doctor Caterina Conti, a 39-year old lung specialist from Bergamo, on its opening page. Dressed in a white doctor’s coat, one can see a mask hanging over her right elbow.

 
All revenues from this issue will be donated to the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, which is at the epicenter of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak. Images of make-shift ICU wards and patients in corridors with plastic ventilation covers over their heads inside said hospital have been broadcast worldwide.
 
#Iocisono, meaning #IAmWithYou, announces the headline over a deck that reads: Stories on doctors, nurses, pharmacists, surgical staff, volunteers and workers in Italy combatting the virus.

“The pressure on our entire region is unrelenting, and the health service is our front line. Doctors and nurses are doing the impossible. We have to give them all the support we possibly can. We need people and equipment to handle a demand for care which is overwhelming the current capacity, even though this has multiplied since the start of this emergency. So we thank Vanity Fair and Condé Nast for standing by us with all the power of their communication channels and a generosity that does them great credit”, said Bergamo's mayor, Giorgio Gori, in a release.
 
The issue includes multiple interviews with courageous doctors and volunteers throughout the peninsula, as well as features on Gennaro Arma, captain of the Diamond – recently back in Italy after his cruise ship was moored in Yokohama – and Daniela Trabattoni, a cardiologist from Monzino. It also features testimonies from Chiara Gamberale, Cesare Cremonini and Daria Bignardi.
 
“Don’t call these doctors, nurses, essential workers and volunteers heroes, because they themselves do not wish to be defined as such. They are professionals with an extraordinary sense of duty; workers at the very limits of their strength and possibilities. For us, they have become the reflection of an Italy which is strong and full of hope, a country that has always managed to survive the hardest of times,” added Simone Marchetti, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair.