Meeting with Dr. Massimo Barra | Rome – Italy

On June 30, 2024, Dr. Miguel Villarroel, Vice President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, held a meeting with Dr. Massimo Barra, President Emeritus of the Italian Red Cross, who joined the Red Cross at the age of 8 years. Former president of the Permanent Commission of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, President of the Villa Maraini Foundation, extraordinary man dedicated to humanitarian life, loyal and great friend.

He participated in humanitarian and institutional missions during major emergencies in times of peace and war, in more than 120 countries. He is currently President of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Association on Substance Abuse, President of the European RCRC network for HIV, hepatitis and drugs, and Co-Chair of the Rome Consensus humanitarian drug policy initiative. . Since 2019 he has been the Special Envoy for Health of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

He has a degree in medicine with honors, he had two great priorities in his life to which he dedicated himself completely: the Red Cross and the recovery of people with drug-related disorders. He founded the Villa Maraini Drug Recovery Center in 1976, becoming one of the world’s leading experts on drugs and public health strategies.

Over more than 40 years, the Center radically increased its activities and services, becoming a reference organization in the field of substance abuse treatment, as well as in the promotion of humanitarian drug policies for Societies. the Red Cross and also for CSOs. Today, it offers a wide range of therapies and services to around 700 drug users a day.

He is the author of hundreds of articles, speeches and publications on harm reduction, rehabilitation strategies and humanitarian drug policies promoted throughout all these years of commitment in the field.

He was the first in the world to promote the use of naloxone by non-medical personnel in overdose emergencies. Thanks to this initiative, more than 2,500 patients on the streets of Rome who were about to die from overdose have been saved. He has repeatedly intervened in institutional forums of the UN (New York, Geneva and Vienna), the Council of Europe, the EU, the Italian and Brazilian Parliaments. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund on HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria.