PROTECT HEROES NOW
Nurse’s desperate plea to private firms to give them the safety kit they need
An NHS nurse has made a desperate plea for companies to provide hospital staff with personal protective equipment. In the latest warning from a frontline health worker, the unnamed nurse claimed staff were being expected to reuse contaminated gowns.
Posting on Facebook, she wrote: ‘Please, please, please if anybody knows of any companies that could spare us some PPE then please we are begging them to help. We are all extremely anxious about the lack of equipment we need to keep ourselves, our families, colleagues and patients safe.’
At Doncaster Royal Infirmary, where the nurse works, scores of doctors, nurses and other NHS workers stood in their scrubs and paid tribute to one of their consultants yesterday morning. Staff were told Dr Medhat Atalla, 62, a much-loved geriatrician, had died last week.
But the hospital – in which he and plaster technician Kevin Smith, 64, have died – has been plagued by PPE shortages, according to the nurse.
Three more healthcare deaths emerged yesterday – bringing the total number of healthcare staff to have died from coronavirus to nearly 130 in the UK.
In another heart- breaking case, a grieving husband told of the desperate moment his NHS worker wife lay struggling for breath as she died in his arms while waiting for paramedics.
Laura Tanner, 51, had told friends how annoyed she was to have come down with ‘nasty flulike symptoms’ because she was so busy at work. But her husband Kevin, 49, described the harrowing final moments on April 1 as her breathing became shallower and she slipped away at home. He said: ‘ Laura was the most wonderful, warm, fantastic wife and mother we could have wished for.’
Shocking stories have continued to emerge from frontline NHS workers over the lack of personal protection they are expected to work with.
Tragically, many have gone on to die of the virus after warning their superiors – and even the Prime Minister – they were at severe risk. Relatives of healthcare assistant Thomas Harvey, 57, who died from coronavirus, claimed he only had ‘gloves and a flimsy apron’ for protection.
The grandfather- of-three fell ill on March 11 having helped a patient who later tested positive for Covid-19, while working at Goodmayes Hospital, in Ilford, east London.
His family said he felt ‘ let down’ due to the lack of equipment and claim with the ‘right’ personal protective equipment he may not have died. Speaking after his death on March 29, his daughter Tamira, 19, told the BBC: ‘If he had just had the right equipment we wouldn’t be in this predicament.’
In South Wales, a friend of a nurse who died after contracting coronavirus claimed he ‘paid the ultimate price’ due to a lack of PPE. Gareth Roberts, 65, who had worked as a nurse across the Cardiff and Vale health board since the 1980s died in hospital in Merthyr Tydfil on April 11.
His childhood friend Janette Leonard said he had little to no protection from the virus as he worked extra shifts to help cover the wards at Llandough Hospital near Penarth.
‘He didn’t have PPE – in the beginning, he said he didn’t have anything,’ she said.
‘He had a paper mask, plastic gloves and a pinny. That’s alright if you are making sandwiches but not when you are going to nurse people with the disease.’ She added: ‘ We’re angry. Why would you send a soldier to the front line without combat gear? It’s unthinkable.’
Meanwhile, a doctor died less than three weeks after writing a Facebook post warning Boris Johnson about the lack of personal protective equipment.
Consultant urologist Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, 53, died on April 8, at Queen’s Hospital, Romford, east London. His eldest son Intisar said he was ‘proud’ his father had the ‘courage... to point out something wrong that the Government was doing’.
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Doncaster Royal Infirmary, said PPE stocks were in good supply. And Cardiff and Vale University health board said it had enough PPE in stock but would take a ‘more detailed look into the availability’ in its hospitals.
‘He paid the ultimate price’