Research suggests, health workers ill-prepared to deal with COVID-19 patients
The Human Sciences Research Council
together with UKZN's School of Medicine says our health care system needs to be
better prepared for public health emergencies.
Their views are based on a survey on the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers.
The research was done between April and May this year on at least 7607 health care workers around the country.
UKZN's professor Mosa Moshabela says most frontline workers received limited training on how to manage COVID-19 patients.
“The COVID-19 pandemic came on to us and we took a while to basically accept it’s here, we took a while to prepare, when we started with preparations we focused on infrastructure like testing and beds. We were not really focused on preparing people, and those people included our heath care workers,” Moshabela said.
Moshabela says one of the major concerns for health care was that their family members would contract the virus from them.
“They were much more concerned about their family members, than they were about themselves. Their own personal needs and concerns were less of an issue relative to the needs of their families. That was across healthcare workers. We also found that nurses were the most concerned,” Moshabela added.