More than four hundred nurses are living miserably while attending Covid-19 patients at city’s Kurmitola General Hospital, the main designated hospital for pandemic victims in the capital.
Although they were promised that they would be kept at residential hotel, accommodations for them have not yet been booked for various reasons, alleged nurses of the hospital.
It is being alleged that although the authorities were quick to arrange food and accommodation facilities for the doctors, the nurses were being treated unfairly.
Nurses of the hospital said after working tirelessly day and night, they are being bound to spend the night in the hospital's empty wards, cabins, changing rooms and even on floor. Many cannot sleep at night due to accommodation crisis, but in the morning they have to attend the Covid-19 patients.
It is learnt that food for the nurses, three meals a day, are being managed from the budget allocated for patients; whereas before joining the duty of attending pandemic patients they were promised of quality food. But there is no separate budget allocated in this regard.
Several nurses of Kurmitola Hospital alleged that the supplied personal protective equipment (PPE) is also of low quality which does not meet the requirements of World Health Organisation. Not only that, there are no N-95 masks for the nurses who pass most of the time with the patients. The generic mask that is being given is also below standard.
Nasima Khatun, a senior staff nurse at the hospital, said, “Getting the assurances of the authorities of quality food and safe accommodation, we came to the hospital taking all our necessities, including clothes and other things, from home. We were told that rooms had been booked at Regency Hotel near the hospital. But after a few days of joining duty, we came to know that no arrangement has been made at all to take us there.”
She said, “We heard that the hotel authorities refused accommodation after knowing that nurses engaged in medical care for coronavirus patients would live there. Later I found out that arrangements at a hotel in Gulshan are being made but we are not being taken there yet.”
Another nurse Sufia Ahmed said that since the coronavirus patients have breathing problems including many other issues, the nurses are facing severe mental stress.
“Although we need to eat protein-rich foods to stay healthy at this time, we are being provided with food managed from the budget allocated for the patients,” she said, adding they had been told that no separate budget has been allocated for providing healthy food to nurses.
She also said the food provided to the patients was also given three times. Many of the nurses said that their hunger isn’t being quenched with the food that they are being given.
They said that about 200 coronavirus patients are currently undergoing treatment in the wards and cabins of the hospital. There are also patients in isolation wards. However, nurses are not being given PPE. Authorities say that only those who do duty in the ward of coronavirus patients will wear PPE. But those at the desk are not being given any PPE. However, at the moment, all nurses feel that PPE is needed to avoid the risk of infection.
The nurses expressed outrage that a cell was formed by the Nursing Directorate to look into the problems of the nurses employed in the medical care of coronary patients, but no one in the cell traced them. They are not available even after trying to communicate with them over mobile phones.
Many top leaders of the Swadhinota Nurses Parishad and Bangladesh Nurses Association (BNA) said that if the food and accommodation problems of the nurses at Kurmitola General Hospital are not resolved quickly, the medical care of Covid-19 patients will be severely disrupted.
On condition of anonymity when asked, an official of the hospital and clinic branch of the health department said that the residential and food problem would be resolved very soon. He declined to say any more details.
