Precaution & Safety Methods for Hospital Duty During covid-19 Pandemic Era for Healthcare Workers of Bihar, India: A protective & Supportive Approach
The current ongoing coronavirus pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2/covid-19/novel coronavirus is an acute infectious communicable disease spreading mainly via respiratory, eye, mouth and other possible routes from person to person as well as through contact with infected non living objects. Added to previous global burden of NCDs (non communicable diseases) & other communicable diseases this new pandemic burden of covid-19 pandemic have put a stress on already overstressed health system of India particularly poor states like Bihar. The delivery of health services is of utmost importance and prime concern in India particularly poor states like Bihar due to high population load with limited resources, poor infrastructure and huge demand on healthcare system. The Healthcare workers (HCWs) are particularly vulnerable group hence this topic needs essential attention and protection. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had presented a challenge even for developed healthcare systems around the world. A sense of fear gripped the whole world due to pandemic and India is not an exception. The scarce healthcare resources including manpower, infrastructure, transportation (ambulance services) etc. have been largely deployed to tackle the situation of pandemic of Covid-19. This shift & covid-19 pandemic has tremendous and detrimental effects on HCWs. The healthcare workers of India as well as Bihar are getting frequently infected leading to death of thousands of healthcare workers till date. Although there are several guidelines issued for precaution and safety at workplace by WHO (world Health Organization) & several accredited organizations but a protective and supportive approach from local management and governance is need of the hour. It seems that there is failure of protective and preventive measures at workplace documented and evidenced by several deaths of healthcare workers. Consequently it is apparent from above scenario to ensure the health and safety of healthcare workers in order to control the outbreak and decrease panic and fear among healthcare workers. In this article I am sharing methods and various ways for protecting healthcare workers (HCWs) while having hospital duties as well as policy makers and management people can also find this article useful while making policies for protecting and safeguarding HCWs. This article aims to reduce incidence/prevalence as well as mortality and morbidity of HCWs in Bihar by suggesting important precautions, preventive measures and other facts to be adopted by healthcare workers at workplace as well as drawing attention of policy maker, important stakeholders and management people to provide protection to HCWs.