{"id":2700,"date":"2021-01-21T22:05:54","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T22:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/?p=2700"},"modified":"2021-01-21T18:13:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T18:13:07","slug":"shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19","title":{"rendered":"Shortage of PPEs hinders fight against Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\">Uganda<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>Many health workers in hospitals across the country are grappling with a shortage of Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) despite the country continuing to register more cases of the disease, Daily Monitor has learnt.<\/p>\n<p>The health workers say they are experiencing a shortage of medical facemasks, gumboots and coveralls despite the country being in stage four of the pandemic that is characterised by community spread.<\/p>\n<p>A health worker at Mulago National Referral Hospital, who preferred anonymity for fear of reprisal from the senior management, said sometimes they share PPEs, meaning that the time of visiting patients in wards is reduced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou work with what is available; sometimes if you see only two health workers entering the intensive care unit, you know the PPEs have reduced. If you see six people entering, that means the supply has increased,\u201d the health worker said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Richard Isabirye, the secretary of the Covid-19 taskforce in Mayuge District, said for about four months now, they have not received coveralls despite putting their request to National Medical Stores (NMS).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurrently, we have to improvise because we cannot monitor confirmed cases when we are not protected. We are stuck, we have been using our own funds but the money is over,\u201d Mr Isabirye said in an interview yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI submitted my requisition to the Ministry of Health and NMS but up to now they have not replied. For sure it has taken long,\u201d he added.Some of the lower health facilities who are not treating Covid-19 say they have had to improvise by buying cloth masks for their workers due to inconsistent supply of masks and gloves. They also say given the shortage of PPEs, sometimes patients have to meet the cost, especially for gloves.<\/p>\n<p><b>Last resort<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Dr Hajj Eboga, the officer-in-charge of Kityerera Health Center IV in Mayuge District, said they had to make double layer cloth masks for their health workers to cut costs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe just buy facemasks for ourselves and one pack of face masks goes about Shs130,000, so I had to make cloth masks for our health workers to cut the costs. So they wash and iron them,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a risk to use cloth masks in a health facility but what we use are double layer from cotton; it gives some protection but the mask alone is not effective. You do that and also implement other protective measures, social distancing,\u201d Dr Eboga added.<\/p>\n<p>He explained that because of lack of steady supply from government, they are pushing the cost of buying some PPEs to patients.At the beginning of the pandemic, the shortage of PPEs was attributed to the global high demand given that some of the medical facemasks and other coveralls had not been imported.<\/p>\n<p>However, with the country experiencing the pandemic for nearly 10 months, the health workers wonder why the government has not purchased enough PPEs.\u201cWe do not have consistent supply of PPE of all ranges; it can be a mask, gloves, and coveralls. This means a health worker is at risk of getting this Covid at work place,\u201d Dr Mukuzi Muhereza, the secretary general of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA), said yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have seen the supply is not as bad as it used to be. Probably what is happening is unavailability of money or problems of supply chain, especially the National Medical Stores (NMS). So we call upon government to look into that so that we protect our workers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Muhereza said the different health facilities have been suffering shortage of PPEs since November.The health workers said there is a need for NMS to revise its method of supplying the PPEs and accuse the government agency of sometimes supplying less equipment than requested for.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Ministry of Health is very aware of this; we have been having meetings and when you ask PPEs from Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL) they tell you it\u2019s NMS that supplies PPEs; when you take your request there, they say \u2018wait we are going to supply.\u2019 So the only thing is to remind Ministry of Health to supply these things to the districts, \u201cone of the health workers said.<\/p>\n<p>However, Dr Muhereza said not all health facilities are facing a shortage of PPEs.\u201cWe made a round sometime back; we were in Jinja, they were complaining and in Mbale hospital they were badly off. But when we went to Moroto, everybody was happy they even had more,\u201d he explained.At least 1,566 health workers contracted Covid-19 last year.<\/p>\n<p><b>Government responds<\/b><\/p>\n<p>However, Mr Moses Kamabare, the executive director of NMS, said there is a delivery scheduled of PPEs which is followed without any delay.\u201cWe receive orders on the needed quantities from Ministry of Health and we deliver as ordered. The delivery is once every month,\u201d Mr Kamabare said.Dr Charles Olaro, the director for curative services at the Ministry of Health, said currently there is no shortage of PPEs and they have not received any complaints.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCoveralls are used in treatment units and not wards. We don\u2019t use coveralls for sample collection\u2026, burials we have clearly indicated that you don\u2019t need coveralls, first of all the person is dead and not breathing; what you need are gloves, masks..,\u201d Dr Olaro said. Stakeholders speak<\/p>\n<p>Mukuzi Muhereza, the secretary general of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA): \u201cWe do not have consistent supply of PPE of all ranges; it can be a mask, gloves, and coveralls. This means a health worker is at risk of getting this Covid at work place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr Charles Olaro, the director for curative services at the Ministry of Health, said currently there is no shortage of PPEs and they have not received any complaints.<\/p>\n<p><b>natukunda@ug.nationmedia.com<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Uganda. Many health workers in hospitals across the country are grappling with a shortage of Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) despite the country continuing to register more cases of the disease, Daily Monitor has learnt. The health workers say they are experiencing a shortage of medical facemasks, gumboots and coveralls despite the country [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":2699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,8],"tags":[233,240,234],"class_list":["post-2700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-community","category-homepage-english","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-uganda","tag-uganda"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Shortage of PPEs hinders fight against Covid-19 - Uganda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Many health workers in hospitals across the country are grappling with a shortage of Covid-19 personal protective equipm ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Shortage of PPEs hinders fight against Covid-19\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many health workers in hospitals across the country are grappling with a shortage of Covid-19 personal protective equipm ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Uganda\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-01-21T22:05:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2021\/01\/img-6009c419bd1f2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Shortage of PPEs hinders fight against Covid-19\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-01-21T22:05:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19\"},\"wordCount\":968,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2021\/01\/img-6009c419bd1f2.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Uganda\",\"uganda\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"community\",\"homepage-english\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/shortage-of-ppes-hinders-fight-against-covid-19\",\"name\":\"Shortage of PPEs hinders fight against Covid-19 - 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