Roberto Stella, a general practitioner aged 67, died on March 11, the first of many doctors to succumb to the coronavirus in Italy.

He lived in Busto Arsizio in Lombardy, an Italian region that has been hit particularly hard by the outbreak, and had planned to step down from his job as a doctor and president of the Order of Physicians in Varese, a city just north of Milan, at the end of this year.

Stella was among the first to urge the government to pay attention to the inadequate personal protective equipment for healthcare staff.

He asked his medical staff to be careful and press on with their work when they had run out of face masks and gloves.

He was a true doctor who worked hard until the end, said Alessandro Colombo, a colleague and friend of Stella.

"His death got the attention of Italian doctors ... It made doctors realize that the coronavirus was something to be taken seriously," Angelo Testa, president of the National Union of Independent Doctors, told Xinhua.

The coronavirus has claimed more than 26,000 lives in Italy, one of Europe's worst-affected countries. A total of 144 medical workers have died of the coronavirus in Italy to date, according to doctors' associations and unions.

About 17,000 health care workers have been infected, more than two-thirds of whom are women, according to the country's public health institute.