Global Nurses United: “Inaction on COVID-19 is a death sentence”
Nurse and healthcare union leaders around the globe demand the World Health Organization and governments step up personal protective equipment requirements, as Dominican nurses’ union leader dies from COVID-19.
Global Nurses United (GNU), an international federation of nurses’ unions, is sounding the alarm on deadly missteps and in some cases negligence by governments, health care employers and international agencies in the global COVID-19 response, after nurse union leaders from 23 nations recently participated in a GNU-organized webinar on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The crisis was brought home by the recent tragic death from COVID-19 of Virgilio Lebron General Secretary of the Asociación de Enfermería del Instituto Dominicano de Seguros Sociales (ADEIDSS), an affiliated union of Global Nurses United in the Dominican Republic. GNU leaders paid tribute to Lebrón’s lifetime commitment to nurses, patients and international solidarity.
GNU leaders say they are outraged that after sending a letter to the World Health Organization on January 30, 2020, demanding the highest level of protections for nurses, the WHO has done nothing to strengthen its guidelines. In that letter, nurse union leaders from 22 countries told the WHO that, “In the current situation where little is known about the transmission of 2019-nCoV, the WHO’s recommendation that only droplet and contact precautions be used for patients with possible 2019-nCoV infections is irresponsible and may endanger healthcare workers.”
The nurse union leaders said WHO’s guidance “falls short in ways that endanger the health and safety of the nurses and other healthcare workers that patients and their families rely on for life-saving care.” The WHO never responded to the letter, which can be seen here: https://act.nationalnursesunited.org/page/-/files/graphics/LetterWHO1-30-20FINAL2.pdf.)
“We cannot stop COVID-19 unless nurses, doctors, and other health care workers in every country, who are on the frontlines of this global pandemic, are protected,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN, executive director of GNU’s United States affiliate National Nurses United. “Nurses in many countries, including the United States, have been treated as if their lives — and therefore, the lives of their patients — are expendable. We are standing together in global solidarity with each other and with our communities to demand action now.”
As recently as March 19, Claudio Colosio, head of the WHO collaborating center for occupational health at the University Hospital of Milan, Italy, was telling unions around the world that surgical masks were sufficient protection for frontline nurses and other health care workers against the virus causing COVID-19. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also said that surgical masks and even scarves and bandannas are sufficient protection, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary.
GNU leaders say they are holding the World Health Organization, as well as national and sub-national governments, responsible for their failure to protect health care workers, and by extension, their patients and communities. Nurses stress that in a pandemic, health authorities should act in accordance with the precautionary principle, which says that in the absence of scientific consensus, we don’t wait until we know something is harmful before we act to protect people.
Being left unprotected for months has been incredibly distressing, say nurses around the world. Several countries on the GNU webinar described personal protective equipment being kept under lock and key in the hospitals, so that some nurses have had their COVID-19 patients die while they were frantically trying to get to the gear.
“Two Italian nurses have committed suicide,” said Andrea Bottega, national secretary of Italy’s NurSind union, that country’s largest nurses’ union. According to Bottega, a lack of protective equipment for nurses and health care workers in Italy, as well as lack of early testing, resulted in more than 6,205 of Italy’s nurses and health care workers contracting COVID-19. With cases and deaths in his country surging, Bottega says desperate nurses have been trying to make protective gear from garbage bags.
Rafael Reig Recena, Secretary General of Trade Union Action of the Nursing Union (SATSE) of Spain, said that in Spain “personal protection equipment, even the most basic” are not available, in many cases, for health workers, due to “bad organization and lack of government foresight.”
According to Reig Recena, this has meant that health professionals constitute 14 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Spain, “becoming an important transmission factor.”
“This situation is going to get worse. But there is one thing that we should all be very aware of: the day after this pandemic ends, that day, we must hold our authorities accountable for their bad management,” said Reig Recena, stressing that unions must take principal part in that claim.
“Our governments will try to convince us that this never happened, that the nurses were never sent unprotected to a fight where they risked their lives every day,” said Reig Recena.
Yet, some countries have managed to curb COVID-19, GNU leaders emphasize, proving that strong government, employer and union efforts work. Sun Ja Na, president of the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union (KHMU), described on the call how South Korea turned an initial explosion of cases — into a relative decline in cases. Taiwan’s quick action also kept cases low in that country, despite its proximity to China.
“As Taiwanese people, we are very proud of our country for good infection control so far,” said Sabrina Chang of the Taiwan Nurses Union, “but we are more worried about our government being so oppressive on health workers’ labor rights, which also has a big impact on keeping nurses and our patients safe.”
In both Taiwan and South Korea, according to union leaders, widespread testing for COVID-19, as well as ample protective gear for nurses and health care workers, played a big role in slowing the spread of the virus in those countries.
But a pandemic cannot be stopped with uneven global action, say GNU affiliates. All countries need to step up, and the organization in charge of the world’s health, the WHO, should recommend airborne precautions immediately, say nurses, so every country and every employer has strong guidance to follow.
“This virus has no borders, so we can’t do things right in just a few places; we must do things right everywhere,” said Castillo. “We are all in this together. Governments and the World Health Organization must listen to nurses and other frontline health care providers on what we need to care for COVID-19 patients. Failure to listen has produced a calamity in too many countries, and sadly we are going to see the continued surge of this virus without much more aggressive action.”
Global Nurses United is a federation of the premiere nurse and health care worker unions in 28 nations, coming together to step up the fight against austerity, privatization, and attacks on public health — and to work for nurses’ and workers’ rights and improved patient care for all. Twenty seven nations were on this week’s global call, including Canada, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Italy (which recently applied to join GNU), Kenya, Malawi, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Rwanda, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Spain, Taiwan, Uganda, the United States and Uruguay.
