Coronavirus outbreakRMCH interns stop work, demand protective gear

STAFF CORRESPONDENT

Some 200 interns of Rajshahi Medical College Hospital have stopped attending to patients, demanding personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep themselves safe from contracting coronavirus.

They stopped working since 8:00 am, our Rajshahi correspondent reports, quoting hospital officials.

"We have quarantined ourselves," said Iqbal Hasan, general secretary of RMCH Interns' Council, adding that doctors are at risk of getting infected without PPE.

"We decided to stay off duty until the protective gears are provided," he said.

"We have not even been provided with a normal mask," an intern of the hospital's medicine unit alleged.

Hospital authorities repeatedly told interns that they would provide PPEs within a day or two, but they failed to do so in the last two weeks, said interns.

"We attend to a number of patients with fever, sneezing, and coughs every day and nobody knows who among them are infected with coronavirus," said the interns' spokesperson Iqbal.

"Who will take responsibilities if any of us get infected with the disease?" he asked.

Interns have not lost their sense of humanity, he added.

"They want to serve people. They are protesting the dillydally by authorities over a serious matter," he added.

Denying the allegations, Deputy Director of the medical college Dr. Saiful Ferdous said the hospital has received nearly 100 pieces of PPEs, 1,000 units each of masks, hand gloves and gowns.

"We have our limitations …. We couldn't provide the PPEs to all doctors of the hospital. We were able to facilitate just the coronavirus unit doctors."

More consignments of protective gears will reach RMCH soon, he added.

Bangladesh yesterday confirmed the first death from coronavirus. The victim was a man in his early seventies and had underlying health conditions. He was infected by one of his relatives who returned from Italy recently.