MPs rage over lack of PPE for workers
STAFF at care homes lacked personal protective equipment in the first months of the pandemic as the Government prioritised the NHS, MPs have said.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee said the homes got a fraction of the PPE needed – and were only taken seriously after many deaths.
The committee said health and social care workers had to reused single-use items as stocks ran “perilously low”.
Surveys by staff groups found 30 per cent of care workers, doctors and nurses lacked PPE – even in high-risk settings.
The committee said: “Many workers were put in the appalling situation of having to care for people with Covid-19 or suspected Covid19 without sufficient PPE to protect themselves”.
Wasted
The committee’s findings follow two highly critical reports published in November by the National Audit Office.
Between March and July 2020, the Department of Health and Care provided NHS trusts with 1.9 billion items of PPE – about 80 per cent of their need.
But it supplied adult social care with 331 million items – just 10 per cent of its requirements.
Between February and July, the Government spent more than £12billion on PPE but wasted hundreds of millions on useless kit.
Face masks had rotten elastic while goggles had to be recalled as unsafe.
In one case, a box of surgical gowns was infested with insects.
Committee chair Meg Hillier said: “The Government needs to acknowledge the errors and be better prepared.”
MIDWIVES are being advised to say “chestfeed” instead of breastfeed when dealing with transgender patients.
Guidance for staff at an NHS Trust also suggests using the term “birthing parents” instead of mother or father. Getting the wrong gender “may inadvertently cause harm,” it says.
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals is altering its website, leaflets, letters and emails to cater for transgender and non-binary patients. It will refer to maternity services as “perinatal services” and suggests calling calling breast milk “human milk or chest milk”.
The document states: “Some people may refer to their ‘chest’ and ‘chestfeeding’ rather than their ‘breasts’ and ‘breastfeeding’.” It adds that staff can use the term woman, but should use more inclusive language such as “people” and says: “As midwives and birth workers, we focus on improving access and health outcomes for marginalised and disadvantaged groups.
“Women are frequently disadvantaged in healthcare, as are trans and non-binary people.”
Campaign group TransActual said: “Let’s hope many more trusts follow suit.” Carolyn
Morrice, Brighton and Sussex Hospitals’ Chief Nurse, said: “Changing the language we use in this way is something people who use our services have been asking for, for some time.
“Our aim will always be to treat everyone who uses our services as an individual, providing care that is personal to them, that meets their needs and using language they are comfortable with.”
OBVIOUSLY ministers read the Daily Express.
Last week I pointed out that the Government would save NHS GPs a lot of work if private sector GPs could simply send their lists to the vaccine co-ordinators instead of all their patients having to register from scratch with their NHS counterparts. And lo, it has at last come to pass, a belated but welcome triumph for common sense.
Meanwhile, the Government needs to work out a way in which other groups do not need to register with NHS GP practices. It is all very well offering an amnesty to illegal immigrants, for example, but most of them are unlikely to want to put themselves on any official record. There is also the small matter of GPs accepting new patients at all. One vulnerable patient I know of tried four different GP practices last month only to be told by each to try again in March.