Nurses in Danger on Serving Nation: COVID-19

In December 2019, a newly identified coronavirus, known as COVID-19 was seen in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China which is causing increasing numbers of illness and death around the world.

This new covid virus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern has now been declared a “global pandemic’ by the WHO.

On January 21, 2020, China announced for the first time that health care workers have been infected. In recent days, thousands of health care workers were dead and have been exposed due to lack of protections.

In situations like this one where knowledge is lacking about a health threat, there is often debate about what actions to take and when.

Following the precautionary principle is necessary to protect nurses and the other healthcare workers from the hazard posed by an emerging infectious disease COVID-19.

Nurses and other healthcare workers have a fundamental right to be safe and be a necessary part of limiting the spread of virus.

At present condition of Nepal , nurses and other health workers who work in hospitals lack personal protective equipment (PPE), and they fear for their own lives while treating patients with suspected coronavirus. Many nurses and doctors do not have a choice, and treat patients without proper PPE. It is unethical of the government and  it’s concerned departments to put health workers at unwarranted risk of infections.

Despite of this situation, the nurses and the health workers are fighting with the invisible enemy by putting their own lives at stake. Although the government has enforced lock down to suppress the pandemic but without proper protection of health workers, the objectives of lock down cannot be achieved. At present where we are lacking  PPE . It is also not  possible for donor countries to respond because they are dealing with shortages themselves. There may be shortages of PPEs due to various reasons, but it is the moral duty of the government to try all possible options and measures to ensure availability and accessibility of personal protective equipment to all front line health workers across the nation.

At these days many nurses and health workers has been harassed by the landlord only because they are committed to providing care to the suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases. The harassment should be stopped immediately so that they can work properly in this hard time.

It’s good that the media and government are giving attention to the nurses and health workers. But they should be applauded as the “ super hero” as a respect for battling against this monster.