Dangers for staff and patients from skimping on PPE
“with Covid-19, medical staff were looking to avoid non-invasive methods because patients would still cough and splutter, increasing the risk of the virus being transferred to medical staff”
The Guardian – “How ventilators work and why they are so important in saving people with coronavirus”
Sorry but I cannot clap that selfish attitude. First do no harm. Suffocating sedated patients with their own phlegm is unethical and is akin to murder.
Those patients who can thrive, albeit coughing and spluttering, with non-invasive ventilation and/or oxygen therapy should never be compulsory sedated, intubated on a ventilator, prevented from coughing and spluttering in order to clear their airway, thereby slowly suffocated by their own phlegm and perhaps consequently killed for the sole convenience of fearful medical staff.
The ethical way to reduce the risk of the virus being transferred to medical staff is by the government investing in the National Health Service to improve the personal protective equipment (PPE) of medical staff to the highest standard and engineering of isolation wards so as to completely isolate medical staff from the virus hazard, as demonstrated in these videos, from South Korea –
and Naples, Italy.
Patients should only be put on sedated, invasive ventilation for the good of their own health, not merely in order to reduce virus risk to insufficiently protected medical staff because misgovernment has left the NHS with insufficient funds to invest in protecting medical staff to the highest standard.
Health ministers of governments should never be allowed politically to leave NHS managers short of funds to invest in appropriate PPE and therefore in the invidious position of mismanaging health care by allowing medical staff to unnecessarily sedate patients and force them to drown in their own phlegm – just because that’s the cheapest option to reduce risk to medical staff.
Governments who refuse to invest in what is required to save lives in the coronavirus pandemic, who allow unethical practices to save money, should be removed from office by parliaments and by the people.
See also Coronation virus
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