“I am exhausted. Many of us here have been working daily for the past one month without a break,” a doctor attached to a primary health centre said.
“We are involved in containment activities. But the masks that we have got are of poor quality. While some districts have received N95 masks, our block has not got the supply yet. We have had less than 10 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits for the past two weeks,” said another doctor, attached to a mobile medical unit.
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“Our village health nurses (VHN) have no proper protective gear and are filled with fear as they carry out checks in areas where positive cases have been reported. We have no gloves and wear only the disposable masks for door-to-door checks,” a VHN noted.
At the centre of the COVID-19 prevention and control in the State are these doctors and staff attached to the Directorate of Public Health (DPH) and Preventive Medicine. But a cross-section of them say they are working with inadequate safety gear on the field.
Unlike the directorates of Medical Education, and Medical and Rural Health Services, the DPH has not reserved a part of its workforce for rotational duty. The former two directorates had put one-third and one-fourth of its workforce respectively, directly involved in treatment and care of patients with symptoms on one-week self-imposed quarantine to ensure that not all healthcare providers are exposed to the risk at the same time.
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“DPH staff are involved in contact tracing, screening of those under home quarantine along with regular outpatient duty at primary health centres. The RBSK (Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram) teams and mobile medical units are part of COVID-19 prevention measures. Some of them continue to be on screening duty at the checkposts. There is no leave, no weekly off for many of the cadre,” one of the doctors on COVID-19 duty said.
“On Wednesday, a 30-year-old medical officer who was on routine COVID-19 duty including field visits died of dengue and scrub typhus. He was on duty till Friday and was hospitalised on developing fever and loose stools. This is the sad reality. All we are asking is posting on rotation basis and a quarantine period for us,” another PHC doctor said.
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Another doctor said the VHNs and anganwadi workers were visiting individual houses to check on symptoms, while doctors organised a medical camp in the locality. “This is a containment zone covering a seven kilometre radius from the house of a COVID-19 patient. Majority of us do not have appropriate safety gear. We do not know if a person being screened is already infected. Some of us have purchased N95 masks on our own. The government is saying adequate masks and PPEs are available but why has it not reached those on the field,” he asked.
Another doctor, who is part of the containment plan, said PPEs were provided only when they visited contacts of the single source event. Some of the doctors had to visit persons under home quarantine and screen them for symptoms based on calls received at the district control room.
A member of a mobile medical unit said that he had to screen contacts of positive patients but did not receive a N95 mask or PPE. “Every health unit district is receiving minimal stock of these safety gear. We had five to eight PPE for two weeks in a block. We carry out the baseline work. The entire department is on the field, and there is no contingency plan,” he said.
A VHN said: “After field-level activities, we return to our homes, and our family is extremely worried.”
Officials of the Health department said they were not posting staff on continuous duty and were ensuring that PPEs were provided for their safety.
