Livorno footballer dies of heart attack

Rome, April 15 (IANS) All Italian football matches scheduled for the weekend were suspended after Livorno midfielder Piermario Morosini died of a heart attack during a Serie B match.

A crowd of players and supporters shouted and cried outside a hospital in Pescara, a city in central Italy, when cardiologist Edoardo De Blasio confirmed the death of the 25-year-old Saturday.

Morosini began to stagger in the 31st minute of the Pescara-Livorno match and then fell to the ground.

Medical staff tried to revive the player and then rushed him to the hospital, but died on arrival.

It was the latest of a long series of sudden deaths in the sports world. A few days ago, another Italian, former Olympic volleyball silver medallist Vigor Bovolenta, died of a heart attack during a second-tier league game.

The Pescara accident aroused a debate in the local media, as some experts said the ambulance was blocked for some minutes by a parked car and thus arrived too late to help the unfortunate player.

"Nowadays it is anachronistic to have a defibrillator on an ambulance which has difficulties in arriving fast enough," cardiologist Daniela Aschieri was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Aschieri developed the first European project for an "early defibrillation" to prevent sudden deaths due to cardiac arrest.

"Defibrillator is a fundamental saving-life instrument, not expensive and that every person can easily handle," the doctor said adding every minute lost in first aid means 10 percent less of probabilities to save a life.

"This instrument should be available not only on ambulances, but on the benches of all matches, including children ones," she stressed.