Lives Lost: Doctor taught a generation of Italian physicians

ROME (AP) — The March 11 death of Dr. Roberto Stella has come to symbolize the plight of Italy’s family doctors, who were largely left on their own to tend to the first wave of COVID-19 patients at home as hospitals filled up. A reformer and teacher who trained a generation of family practitioners in Lombardy, Stella now occupies a place of tragic distinction in the pandemic in Italy. The 67-year-old is the first name on the list of more than 150 medical doctors who died in the coronavirus crisis. His longtime friend and colleague Alessandro Colombo said “it was like the captain of doctors was hit.”