Lacking protective gear, Ukrainian doctors face mass infection with COVID-19

In Ukraine, medical workers are leading an uneven battle against the novel coronavirus. But the state is failing its own defenders.

Poorly equipped and overworked, doctors are falling ill with the invisible enemy they are tasked to combat.

As of April 16, Ukraine has 4,161 laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 788 among medical personnel — nearly a fifth of the total. Out of them, more than 100 medical workers were diagnosed with COVID-19 during one day, April 15.

There are 4,046 medical workers caring for COVID-19 patients in Ukraine. Some of them still lack basic protective gear – medical masks, respirator masks and full-body hazmat suits – making them unnecessarily vulnerable to the virus.

Front-line medical workers are being hit by COVID-19 worldwide. According to a report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on April 14, over 9,000 healthcare workers were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the country as of April 9.

But the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. at that point was 469,000, meaning that medical staffers accounted for less than 2% of the total, a far better figure than in Ukraine.

Inna Ivanenko, managing director of Patients of Ukraine, a non-governmental health organization, says that Ukraine has failed to equip medical workers to fight coronavirus and lags in testing them for COVID-19, paving way for doctors to infect each other.

“There is a possibility that soon there simply won’t be people left to treat (patients),” Ivanenko told the Kyiv Post.

Lacking the basics

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, there are 242 hospitals taking in patients with COVID-19. They are equipped with 2,042 lung ventilators and have 1,371 vacant intensive care beds.

But most hospitals have shortages of protective gear tasked with minimizing the risk of patients transmitting the virus to doctors.

According to the ministry, COVID-19 hospitals are generally provided with supplies for 20 days ahead and are staffed at 80 percent of the required capacity. But the situation varies depending on the medical facility.

Over half of medical facilities have supplies for up to 10 days, some for less than a week. The same goes for medical workers: Some hospitals are fully staffed, while others have less than a quarter of the required personnel.

Ivanenko says that even those dire numbers are optimistic and go against what her organization has encountered when communicating with hospital staff directly.

“In the beginning, (medical workers) had nothing, not even gloves or masks,” says Ivanenko. According to her, hospitals even lacked sanitizers.

There are still severe shortages of respirator masks and of protective suits, she says.

“On the government’s end, there was a failed response to the pandemic,” she adds, noting that, from the very start, medical workers had to rely on volunteers and philanthropists for assistance.

According to the Patients of Ukraine website, the nonprofit raised over $100,000, mostly to buy much needed respirator masks and protective suits.

Slow start

On April 16, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that out of the 788 medical workers diagnosed with COVID-19, 126 are from Chernivtsi Oblast, which was the first Ukrainian region with confirmed coronavirus cases. 

“We are analyzing each case of a medical worker getting infected and the reasons behind it,” said Stepanov. 

Serhiy Dubrov, president of the Association of Anesthesiologists of Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post that from the start many patients who had COVID-19 didn’t know of their illness, while doctors who treated them didn’t take necessary precautions. 

“The question probably lies in that a patient goes in for something not tied to COVID, for some other illness and then in a few days they exhibit COVID and in those few days, the staff does not comply with personal protection requirements, treating the patient as if they don’t have COVID.”

“In some cases, I can’t say if it’s widespread, it’s a simple violation of elementary rules of protection among personnel,” Dubrov said on April 16. 

However, the numbers of infected doctors are increasing daily, long after an official protocol of how to treat COVID-19 patients was established. Ivanenko says that doctors aren’t being tested in time, to stop the spread. 

She also blames the health ministry for ineffectiveness.   

Corruption

Ivanenko says Ukraine lost valuable time, when former Health Minister Ilya Yemets blocked procurement of essential medical supplies for weeks.

On March 25, Arsen Zhumadilov, head of the government’s medical procurement department, accused Yemets of stalling the purchase of critical supplies. Zhumadilov said that Yemets wanted to appoint a loyalist as the procurement chief’s deputy and, when Zhumadilov declined, Yemets decided to sabotage his work.

Zhumadilov asked the State Investigation Bureau to investigate the matter. Yemets filed a complaint of his own citing it was Zhumadilov who was sabotaging procurement. Yemets was fired by parliament days later on March 30, after less than a month on the job.

After Yemets’ ouster, Ukraine was able to buy 90,000 protective suits, Ivanenko says. But according to the health ministry’s website, Ukraine requires 10 times more.

According to the health ministry, the country still needs 500,000 respirators, 2 million medical masks and 2 billion gloves.