Covid-19 has affected many healthcare workers, and first responders too. That’s likely because they may drop their guard, while dealing with life-threatening situations. The official health care worker death toll is over 150,000, although this may be the tip of the iceberg. World Health Organization (WHO) issued a call for concrete measures to improve this situation. We need to get smarter at shielding health care workers from COVID-19, they say.
We Need a More Structured Approach to Protecting Them
WHO is calling all member states, and stakeholders to strengthen management and monitoring of these key personnel. This should include stratifying results by occupation, age and gender to better understand COVID infections, illnesses and deaths among them. We are surprised this level of detail is not already available.
However, we are even more taken aback to learn that health care workers are not always prioritized for vaccines in WHO member countries. Their October 21, 2021 statement confirms the overall global vaccination rate is only 2 in every 5. And there is ‘considerable difference across regions and economic groupings’.
1… The top 22, mostly high income countries report over 80% of their health care workers have full vaccination
2… However, less than 10% have this in African and Western Pacific regions, according to self-reported data.
Shielding Health Care Workers from COVID Is an Urgent Priority
Sending unvaccinated health care workers into infected communities, is akin to not providing fire fighters with protective clothing. Shielding health care workers from COVID is the least we can do surely, out of gratitude for their service.
‘We have a moral obligation to protect all health and care workers,’ says Jim Campbell, Director of the WHO Health Workforce Department. ‘We must ensure their rights and provide them with decent work in a safe, and enabling practice environment. This must include access to vaccines.’
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