NHS Workers Don’t Want Applause, They Want PPE
The Guardian is clearly regular reading for many health professionals and other key workers fighting Covid-19.
Here are just two of a slew of heartfelt letters the paper has received. These were published on April 20th expressing the writers’ anger and frustration. They show up the government’s incompetence and the real situation facing frontline workers with the lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
I am a retired consultant paediatrician. My beautiful, intelligent and brave son, daughter-in-law and niece are frontline junior doctors. One works in an ICU where, like around a third of staff, he does not have a respirator mask that fits, or adequate supplies of eye protection. Another is on a Covid-19 palliative care ward for the elderly, and the third works on long-stay psychiatric wards; both are caring for symptomatic patients who understand nothing of not having direct physical contact. They are told by managers not to make a fuss when they ask for FFP3 masks, long-sleeve gowns and visors.
Over 50 NHS staff have now died from this infection. I think we will look back and see that it is not only the failure to stockpile equipment, the privatisation of NHS logistics, the dependency on importing foreign-made personal protective equipment, and the inability to rapidly repurpose local industry, but also the inadequacy of Public Health England recommendations in terms of protecting staff, that will have led to many avoidable deaths. I am staggered to read that some senior figures in NHS England regard PHE advice as “excessive” (NHS staff told ‘wear aprons’ as protective gowns run out, 17 April). I wonder whether their opinion would change if they did a shift with one of my young relatives?
Dr John Puntis
Co-chair, Keep Our NHS Public
So the government has finally admitted that PPE is running out (PPE including gowns and masks running out, admits UK government, 18 April). It has done nothing but lie for weeks. PPE has been insufficient since this crisis began, as you are reporting on an almost daily basis. How many health professionals and social care workers have died already due to lack of adequate protection?
You report that the government has ordered 400,000 gowns from Turkey. But you say the NHS needs 150,000 gowns a day, so this new order will last less than three days – if it exists, if it ever arrives. Then what? When will the next order be placed? Why isn’t everyone shouting about this? The incompetence is stunning. Everyone must support an all-NHS strike. They have every right to protection. Then let’s clap.
Marge Berer
London
