Scores of nurses ‘resign as virus cases soar’
MANILA: Many medical frontliners especially nurses have been resigning as they complained of exhaustion and alleged government failure to address their “dismal working conditions” in the face of an unabated spike in coronavirus (COVID-19) infections due mainly to the deadly and highly transmissible Delta variant, leaders of two groups of healthcare workers warned.
The warning came from Maristela Abenojar, the head of the Filpino Nurses United (FNU), and Robert Mendoza, the president of the Association of Health Workers ( AHW), who noted that there has been “understaffing” of nurses and other medical frontliners in several hospitals long before the Delta strain was confirmed to have emerged as the dominant strain in the country.
For instance, Abenojar disclosed that 50 to 100 of their members have already resigned since July this year.
She said their resignation had adversely affected the ideal ratio for nurses and COVID patients - 1:4 in wards and 1:1 in intensive care units (ICUS).
But due to the spike in confirmed cases, a nurse has been forced to atend to as many as 200 patients, Abenojar said.
“They opted to resign because they are now losing hope that their conditions will improve. Cases of COVID-19 are rising but they are not given ample protection by the government,” she lamented in a media briefing.
Mendoza agreed with Abenojar as he confirmed that many nurses have resigned out of exhaustion due to the alarming spike in COVID-19 infections blamed on the Delta variant, which was first detected in India.
According to Mendoza, the frontliners complained that what they have been receiving in terms of salaries and other benefits were not commensurate to the risks they have been facing especially with the seemingly unabated rise in COVID-19 infections.
Their warning became even more relevant following a report from the Department of Health (DOH) that it logged on Saturday a record high 26,303 new daily COVID infections, which brought the national tally to a total of 2,206,021.
The DOH added active cases, meaning patients who have not yet recovered, rose to 185,706, or 8.4 percent of all total cases. It added that recoveries stood at 1,985,337 from 16,013 survivors while the death toll hit 34,978 from 79 new fatalities.