Healthcare workers risk lives on frontline against COVID-19

AMMAN — The rise in COVID-19 related fatalities and infections among frontline healthcare workers has sounded a clarion call for strict public adherence to protective guidelines.

Eight doctors have lost their lives due to COVID-19 and the infection rate among healthcare workers is on the rise, Acting President of the Jordan Doctors Association Mohammad Rusol Tarawneh said in a statement.

Tarawneh attributed the rising fatality and infection rate among medical staff to “the tremendous pressure on medical staff that has weakened their community and endurance.

Calling medical personnel the Kingdom’s “white army” and its “first line of defence”, Tarawneh reminded the public that “protecting the health system and its personnel is now a national duty”.

Tarawneh said that the rise in infection and deaths among doctors is mainly due to three reasons: Lack of training, lack of protective material and crowded hospitals.

He stressed that the association is “doing its best to provide doctors with the needed protective material as well as come up with an effective strategy to mitigate the risk of infection.”

President of the Jordanian Nurses and Midwives Association Khaled Rababa said that “there is a clear weakness in crisis management within the health sector in addition to the absence of strategic plans”.

“Separating ambulance and emergency personnel from the rest of the medical and nursing staff is a must, so that they do not mix. Hospitals must also start dispensing monthly treatments to patients for three months not just one month, because 80 per cent of patients in hospitals are not there for COVID treatment but end up getting infected when they visit the hospital,” Rababa told The Jordan Times.

Rababa suggested reducing the working hours of medical staff by granting them leave for two weeks and securing reserve teams so that “no one suffers from exhaustion and fatigue”.

Mohammad Barbawi, a member of the association, told The Jordan Times over the phone that hospitals must “limit the number of working hours for doctors, so that no doctor works for more than eight continuous hours in emergency departments overcrowded with patients.”

Barbawi also called for “limiting the number of patients a doctor sees daily to 80”. He urged the public to “protect themselves to protect the health workers”.