The Independent Syndicate of Doctors (SIM) recommended this Friday to these professionals “to refuse to assist all acute patients with acute respiratory symptoms” without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and which include respiratory masks.
In a statement published on its website this evening, the SIM declares to receive “reports of doctors being quarantined by contact at all times during consultations with patients confirmed as positive or suspected.” [com a Covid-19], most of them with respiratory symptoms, but not eligible as suspected cases “by the rules of the Directorate-General for Health (DGS).
“Doctors do not have personal protective equipment available in these circumstances. Even simple surgical masks are being rationed in many places, both at the hospital level in the emergency services and at the level of primary health care,” says SIM.
According to this union, “the PPE available (two or three per unit) for use in the evaluation of suspected cases (…) are not equipped with respiratory masks type N95 / FFP2 or N99 / FFP3, the only ones that are really protective” .
The SIM recalls that on Thursday it had already alerted the Minister of Health, Marta Temido, to the “serious lack” of PPE, stressing that, since then, she has not seen “any response” and that “the situation is rapidly deteriorating”.
“Thus, SIM recommends to all physicians that they refuse to treat all acute patients with acute respiratory symptoms without adequate personal protective equipment and which include respiratory masks (and non-surgical ones), communicating to the Union and the Medical Association. such occurrence “, the note reads.
Tonight, the National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) also denounced the lack of basic protective equipment for infection control and the lack of adequate ‘stocks’ to face an eventual exponential increase in cases of Covid-19 disease.
“The National Federation of Doctors has received several reports of insufficiency of basic protective equipment for infection control and the absence of adequate ‘stocks’, to face an eventual exponential increase in cases of coronavirus infection”, says the FNAM, in a statement .
In this sense, FNAM “advises doctors to demand the recommended protective equipment, according to the guidance 003/2020” of the DGS.
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