Matteo Bassetti

Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Liguria Region – Director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the IRCCS San Martino Hospital in Genoa and Full Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Genoa.

Professor Matteo Bassetti is known by all Italians for being one of the points of reference during the most difficult moments of the pandemic.

He coordinated, and still coordinates, the work of the research and treatment team on Covid and infectious diseases at San Martino Hospital, one of Italy’s largest hospitals.

During the pandemic, in addition to managing his team of emotionally and physically exhausted doctors and nurses, he managed more than 2,500 patients and their frightened and grieving relatives.

His motto throughout the period was “We will make it! We will win this time too!” Professor Bassetti, has always been a firm believer in teamwork and effort of his staff, in multidisciplinarity, in science.

Throughout the pandemic period, he never stopped instilling courage to all Italians through all media. Just like the book he later published, “A Lesson Not to Be Forgotten – Chronicle of a Battle to Defeat Covid-19 Without Panic or Catastrophism,” Professor Bassetti emphasized the importance of not being overwhelmed by panic and catastrophism in times of difficulty, even extreme ones.

Professor Bassettis experience as an infectious disease expert and coordinator of a large team that overnight found itself facing an even more complicated and uncertain situation than the one for which it had been prepared, is of basic importance in instilling positive and constructive messages for companies or groups dealing with uncertainty, difficulty, fatigue, frustration, and limited and fewer resources than necessary.

In the Details:

Professor Bassetti is head of the Infectious Diseases Clinic at San Martino Hospital in Genoa and a full professor of infectious diseases at the University of Genoa. He studied at the University of Genoa School of Medicine and continued his medical training at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, USA, with a fellowship in infectious diseases. From 2011 to 2019, he was director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic at the Santa Maria della Misericordia Hospital of the University Hospital of Udine.

Professor Bassetti is president of the Critical Illness Study Group of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), president of the Italian Society of Anti-Infectious Therapy (sita), and a member of the Italian Ministry of Health’s Executive Committee for Combating Antimicrobial Resistance (PNCAR). Since 2019, he has been a board member of the International Sepsis forum (ISF). From 2022 to present, he is a spokesperson for the Italian Society of Scientists (ISA). Serves on the editorial board of several prestigious international journals. Author or co-author of more than 900 articles published in international peer-review journals with a Hindex of 95 and more than 35000 citations and several book chapters on covid-19, antibiotic therapy, fungal infections, antimicrobial resistance, infections in immunocompromised and critically ill patients.