Healthcare staff from around the world are facing a serious medical equipment shortage as they battle the deadly coronavirus and netizens are expressing their concerns.
Twitter user @TrevorCoultMC shared a clip of a medical professional demonstrating what equipment is needed before working around coronavirus patients: “This gives you an idea of how many layers of protection doctors must wear to protect themselves every day from the coronavirus.”
The Philippines
User @RicciSquadAklan appealed people to help healthcare workers in the Philippines: “We are asking you all to please help our province of Aklan. There are currently three confirmed positive cases in our province but our frontliners do not have enough PPEs [Personal Protective Equipment] to fight the virus. They use raincoats as improvised PPE. A simple retweet can do! #PPEforAklan”
The Philippines currently has over 1,000 coronavirus cases and 78 deaths due to the disease.
United States
Whereas user @marwilliamson tweeted about the US failing to allocate enough funds to provide medical equipment: “It is completely unacceptable that any doctor at any hospital in the United States is lacking the medical equipment they need in order to handle this. ... has a government that in the most infuriating, immoral way has let down its own citizens.”
Tweep @politelyrude shared a click of her mother with a face mask on and wrote: “My mom is an ICU nurse this all the PPE she gets #Coronavirustruth”
A healthcare worker, @CorneliaLG, from New York, US tweeted: “My babies are too young to read this now. And they’d barely recognise me in my gear. But if they lose me to COVID I want them to know Mommy tried really hard to do her job. #GetMePPE #NYC”
India
In India, the situation is not any different. Reports of medical equipment shortages have been surfacing and social media users have highlighted the issue.
User @BansodNakul tweeted a picture of a newspaper clipping and wrote: “News in today's Times of India, doctors do not have sufficient N95 masks and PPE. Doctors are working day and night to safeguard our lives, yet they are not provided with adequate equipments. Doctors are our saviours but who will save them.”
Tweep @raunakbasishth shared a clip of a nurse and tweeted at Tedros Adhanom, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Dr. Maria D. Van Kerkhove, infectious disease epidemiologist at the WHO: “Please watch this a nursing staff of NMCH [Nalanda Medical College Hospital] a dedicated hospital for #COVID19 in Patna a capital city of Bihar, India. There is no PPE provided by Govt. No one is ready to treating the infected patient. Due to this, all doctors are left hospital. Save us.”
Pakistan
Currently, there are more than 1,600 confirmed cases of coronavirus reported in Pakistan and medical facilitates are under immense pressure much like other parts of the world.
Despite, according to Pakistan’s foreign ministry, China sending a plane loaded with medical personnel and supplies to one of the world’s most populous nations struggling to control the spread of COVID-19, reports of PPE shortages have come out.
Tweep @ranjha001 thought that local production of masks needs to increase: “Honestly it’s not very difficult to make N95 mask, its 4 layered FDA approved mask which can be easily made in Pakistan. You just need to guide your textile sector, no need to waste billions on masks, PPE promote your home industry. Just import ventilators and Rapid Kits!”
Twitter user, @fatimaanilapk, shared a post about Umer Hussain, a textile industry businessman’s proposal: “But, today's recent update by #UmerHussain on his @facebookapp he doesnt need stitcher any more as he got connected with a huge textile stitching unit and is now in direct communication with @pdmasindhpk [rovincial Disaster Management Authority] for manufacturing and delivering PPE on very reasonable rates @ndmapk.”
Hussain had shared how he has supposedly helped curated a manufacturing chain to make low cost PPE suits, to be shipped across Pakistan.
In his post, he promised to be “transparent” and wrote to those who are hoarding medical equipment in the country to monetise on them.
“I will bring each one of you hoarders down,” he wrote.
