THE SCARCITY OF PERSONAL PROTECTION EQUIPMENT
By: FUTURE STEM LEADERS
Tahmina Feyezi
JANUARY 2021 ISSUE No.2
"COVID-19 Frontline Health Workers" by UN Women Asia & the
Pacific is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
THE EXPOSITION LINGERS ON
Healthcare workers, especially those that conduct simple procedures on tested positive patients, are most at risk. It was an issue that was addressed when the government was working diligently to provide PPE for health care workers in March 2020. Dr. Faezah A. Bux is a healthcare worker in Central Kentucky who conducted procedures like intubation on tested positive patients without PPE in March, during the global lockdown. Oftentimes, healthcare workers were given expired PPE as well as equipment that was not appropriate for use.
Today, the coronavirus vaccine is not yet available to the greater public, meaning there is still a risk of the spread. An anonymous source, an EMT worker herself, states that her own company was short of PPEs. She ended up contracting COVID-19 due to the risk she had put herself in during the pandemic’s peak.
Moreover, the scarcity of resources led employees to reuse hefty equipment like N95 masks when on call.
“We have the N95 on and then we have the regular blue surgical mask over to make sure it doesn't get contaminated,”
our source tells. Each member of her team was only given one N95 mask that was reused often. Although blue surgical masks were given more often, this still put EMT workers in jeopardy.
This is simply one voice in a wave of healthcare workers. They are the utter description of heroes without their capes. How do they manage to fly without their capes?
SOURCES:
“Department of Labor Logo UNITED STATESDEPARTMENT OF LABOR.” COVID-19 - Control and Prevention - Healthcare Workers and Employers | Occupational Safety and Health Administration, www.osha.gov/coronavirus/control-prevention/healthcare-workers.
Jacobs, Andrew, et al. “'At War With No Ammo': Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Mar. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/health/coronavirus-masks-shortage.html.
