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'Shortage of PPEs risks health of doctors, patients' during COVID-19 crisis, says the medic

KARACHI: Sindh Young Doctors Association (YDA Sindh) Chairperson Dr. Umer Sultan on Sunday stressed on the need for medics to be equipped with protective gear to ensure their own as well as their patients' safety. 

"Last night, a patient was transferred from a private hospital to our emergency facility, he died last night and was diagnosed with coronavirus today,  he said.

"The doctors who treated him are now in quarantine for 14 days including the paramedical staff. Who is going to replace them?” asked Sultan, who is also a consultant physician at the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Center (JPMC).

The young doctor appealed to the government to provide personal protective equipment (PPEs) to all doctors serving during the pandemic since they were exposed to potential patients on a daily basis. "Save doctors to save patients," he urged.

Sultan also spoke of Italy, where conditions at the start were eerily similar to those in Pakistan and have remained so even after a month has passed since the first patient tested positive. There, "the death rate is increasing drastically because more than 1,500 of their doctors are in quarantine, they are reserved to their houses with no replacement”, he said.

“If such things start here, then we will face a crisis greater than Italy as Pakistan does not have enough ventilators and other facilities to fight coronavirus.”

Referring to the risk medical staffers pose to others, he said: "If doctors — the ones who are infected — are not wearing PPEs, they will end up infecting either the patients they treat or their family members.”

"Recently, the daughter and father-in-law of a colleague were diagnosed with coronavirus; she was young and did not show symptoms [at all]. So doctors are also a real risk,” he said.

Sultan explained that any doctor in an emergency ward, as well as general physicians, treat nearly 50 patients a day, while the number is little lower when it comes to surgeons and consultants, which effectively means that there are 50 chances for any of the aforementioned healthcare professionals to be infected.

Praising the medical fraternity, Sultan said house officers and post-graduate doctors were working 30-hour shifts every four to five days and that they were trying their best to tackle the pandemic. "We are working extra hours as well and we appeal to the chief minister to provide us with a health risk allowance like his Punjab counterpart did recently,” he said.

The YDA Sindh official requested the provincial government to immediately distribute the 200,000 PPEs they recently received.