A Painful Necessity

• Prize
  Gold in People/Portrait, 1st Place winner in People
• Photographer
  Gabriele Micalizzi
• Agency / Studio
  Cesura

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, more than 170 doctors have died from the virus. According to Professor of Sociology of Health Ivan Cavicchi, general practitioners and other primary care providers have been “abandoned” and “left without protections”. With time, the conditions of doctors and care providers and the attention to their personal protective equipment improved, lowering the risks to their health. A really important tool for everyone's safety is swab testing, although it's a procedure that can feel intrusive and be quite painful.

Gabriele Micalizzi is an Italian photojournalist, he collaborates with national and international newspapers. He is one of the founders of the Italian collective Cesura, with the photographer Alex Majoli. In 2011 he began to reporting all the events related to the "Arab Spring". In 2019, during the Kurdish offensive in the Baghuz area against the last bastion of Isis, he was wounded by an RPG rocket. In Libya he cover the arrival of Turkish troops sent to help President Al Sarraj resist General Haftar's attack. In 2020 it followed the pandemic in the most affected areas of Italy.