THE NEWS, AROUND 5:00 PM, TODAY MAY 17, 2024, WAS GIVEN TO THE MEDIA BY THE FAMILY THEMSELVES: “Embraced by the love of his wife, daughter, sisters and brother and by the affection of his closest friends, the journalist FRANCO DI MARE died TODAY IN ROME. AN NOTICE WILL FOLLOW BEFORE THE BURIAL.”
Franco di Mare he had spoken about his health condition during an appearance on the television show “How’s the weather”Carried out by Fabio Fazio on the Nine. It was April 28, less than a month ago, when Di Mare revealed to the television audience that he was seriously ill: “I have a very serious tumor, mesothelioma: this is absorbed by inhaling asbestos particles. I have little time left to live, but it is not over yet.”
Unfortunately, the pleural mesothelioma it is an asbestos-related pathology that allows no escape. “As a war correspondent I inhaled asbestos: I am calm and do not give up, but there is no cure,” he said on television.
Di Mare had inhaled asbestos in the war zones where she had been sent by the public service. However, the correspondent confessed his drama and also expressed his disappointment because “Rai is not responding to my emails.”
“I understand there are trade union and legal reasons, I asked for the track record, the list of places I’ve been to find out what could be done. I can’t understand the absence on a human level, people who I used to speak to but who denied each other on the phone. I only find one adjective: it’s disgusting,” Di Mare had said that to Fazio.
But the journalist had also inhaled asbestos at the Rai headquarters in Rome. It was even known that state television had invested significant resources over the years in an attempt to resolve an issue regarding the presence of asbestos in the Viale Mazzini building.
So much so that Di Mare is not the only victim of the deadly fiber. According to some testimonies, regular checks were carried out to monitor the amount of asbestos fibers in the air. But this was not enough to prevent exposure.
War correspondent Franco Di Mare
Franco Di Mare graduated in political science from the Federico II University of Naples. He started working with several newspapers, including L’Unità. In 1991 he joined Rai on the foreign editorial staff of TG2.
A short time later the company sends it to BALKANS to follow the events of the war. As a correspondent he will cover the main areas of the regionAfrica and of theCentral America.
It is right during the war events former Yugoslavia who may have contracted the terrible disease. A lot of ammunition was used during the conflictDepleted uranium. When it hit and destroyed buildings and industrial complexes, it generated temperatures above 3,000 ºC, releasing a very dangerous substance heavy metal aerosols and asbestos fibers.
“One was enough – (of fibres) Di Mare laconically underlines -. Six thousand times lighter than a hair. Maybe I met her in Sarajevo, in July 1992, my first mission. Or the last one, in 2000, who knows. I couldn’t have known it, but I had inhaled death.” “The incubation period can last thirty years. Here we are.”
At the National Asbestos Observatory conference
Last November – in all likelihood he already knew he was seriously ill – Franco Di Mare moderated the conference “Asbestos and uranium, in war and in peace: wealth and poverty, from energy to health,” organized byNational Asbestos Observatory and by the president, the lawyer Ezio Bonannia Roma.
“Italy loses one of the most authoritative figures in journalism and culture – Bonanni reacted to the news as follows -. We are close to his wife, daughter and his entire family. As the National Asbestos Observatory, we will continue the fight against the silent killer that still claims thousands and thousands of victims in our country.”
Starfish
He was 35 years old when Di Mare, sent by the RAI to Bosnia to document the war events, was placed in an orphanage in Sarajevo sees a ten-month-old girli which he decides to adopt. Is called Stella.
The works of Franco Di Mare
The journalist published the book in 2009 ‘The sniper and the little girl. Emotions and memories of a war correspondent”. A testimony of his experiences as a war correspondent, especially during the conflict in Bosnia.
Di Mare talks about the difficulties and dangers faced in documenting war events and includes the moving episode ofadoption of a ten-month-old girl, Stella, precisely.
Through his memoirs, the author offers a personal and human perspective on the war, its consequences and the stories of those affected by it.
This first novel is followed by: “Don’t ask why” (2011), “Casimiro Rolex” (2012), “The Devil’s Paradise” (2012), “The miracle coffee” (2015), “The Baba Statement” (2017), “Barnabas the Magician” (2018).
“The words to say it. The war outside and within us”
The book was published on April 30 “The words to say it. The war outside and within us.” Di Mare writes that even after the end of wars they continue to make victims. A tragic example is shown by “Balkan Syndrome”, a long line of diseases caused byexposure to depleted uranium bullets and frominhalation of asbestos particles that – as already mentioned – end up in the air.
These pathologies reemerge after many years as an extension of the horrors of war. The events that Di Mare witnessed in the field during his long years as a correspondent and which profoundly affected his morale, were echoed – the author wrote – in the battle he waged against the evil within him.
A biographical report in which the author narrates “The wars outside me and the ones within me. A small existential dictionary. Without pity. It is my will.”