Russia's Famous Italian-Born Conductor Helped Italy With 2 Mln Masks, 100 Ventilators

Fabio Mastrangelo, the artistic director of the St. Petersburg State Music Hall Theater, helped to find and mediated a shipment from China to his native Italian region of Apulia of 2 million medical masks and 100 ICU ventilators, which are the most needed equipment in Italy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th March, 2020) Fabio Mastrangelo, the artistic director of the St. Petersburg State Music Hall Theater, helped to find and mediated a shipment from China to his native Italian region of Apulia of 2 million medical masks and 100 ICU ventilators, which are the most needed equipment in Italy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.

"To date, through SinoPES International Engineering Co. Ltd, based in Beijing, China, we were able to acquire 2 million masks of the needed type FFP2 - 95 (I became a specialist in this terminology in the meantime) and, most importantly, 100 pulmonar ICU ventilators," Mastrangelo told Sputnik.

The first 20 ventilators are expected to be delivered to the Bari airport on April 1 with more shipments to follow each day, he stated.

According to the maestro, who is often referred to as Russia's most famous Italian-born conductor, he thought of ways to help his fellow Italians every time he was checking statistics and watching the news from Italy, which is coping with the worse pandemic case in Europe.

"When the phone rang in the afternoon of March 15, I was in Moscow's Vnukovo airport.

Just a few seconds to ask each other how we were doing and the conversation turned to a very serious subject. Personnel and hospitals in the Apulia Region were badly in need of help. My dear friend Michele Emiliano, the region's governor, asked me to think about people who could help finding masks and ventilators. Conductors are that kind of people. Because of a widespread love of music they tend to get acquainted with the most unexpected people. Politicians, doctors, businessmen. This time enjoying such a wide variety of friends became an important factor in being able to help my native region," Mastrangelo concluded.

Italy has been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, registering some 75,000 cases and over 7,000 deaths. The spread has begun to slow down over the past several days amid a strict lockdown, but the country still registers thousands of new cases each day. Russia has sent military doctors on board a dozen planes to help the Mediterranean country tackle the emergency.