the Lack of protection against the coronavirus arouses increasing concern.
Both in certain departments at hospitals, in nursing homes and, more recently, by general practitioners, where Anders attractive décor with wooden flooring, the chairman of the Danish society of General Medicine, call it intolerable, that practitioners are not able to be protected better against coronasmitte from the patients.
Or that the infection goes the other way.
Helene Viftrup Jensen is also concerned. She is concerned that her 82-year-old mother from the Home and the mother’s carers becoming infected with the coronavirus, because the social and health care assistants and home helps, which comes two times a day with her mother, also affected by the lack of, for example, masks.
“We get all the time knowing that we must keep two meters distance. But as a disabled person and hjemmehjælpsmodtager – and also as a home helper – it can not be avoided, that one comes quite close to each other. I am appalled that you do not give priority to the group higher,” says Helene Vifttrup Jensen.
“Dentists come also quite close to their patients, but there are no dentists that are not protected. What is the difference compared to those who receive home help? And those who work in home care?” she asks rhetorically.
Helene Viftrup Jensen has talked with the hygiejnesygeplejerske, which has responsibility for ensuring that the protective equipment is available locally with her mother, is being used in the best way possible.
as Expected, she has got the answer, that the municipality is doing all it can, but that there is currently unfortunately not the masks to all the helpers in home care.
“It’s not because I can’t understand the issue. I have been informed that they follow the Health recommendations, which says that mundbind is not to be used preventive. But I think it is all too easy, when we again and again hear from the Health director, Søren Brostrøm, that masks do not help, and therefore, do not recommend to use the mask. We can see that a number of other countries from requiring the use of the mask. Also in the public space,” she says.
“In Denmark recommends the authorities that we must keep two meters distance to each other. But it can be the elderly and the disabled not, after all, when they receive assistance, for example, to bath and dress. And so should the caregivers and the recipients of help, well at least be offered a mundbind or be tested for the coronavirus. It is the both parties, which is set in a creepy situation,” states Helene Viftrup Jensen.
the Issue of protective equipment and their efficiency are currently so much on that Friday’s press conference with the Danish authorities – this time with the Danish Health and medicines authority as the lead actor – was only about just that.
Erik Jylling, public health director at Danish Regions, said:
“When there is a lack of protective equipment, it is essential that we use them, we have, where there is the greatest need. We need to go strict after it is necessary.”
And Christian Harsløf, director of AT, who has the contact to the municipalities, such as home care falls under, said:
“the Task is to use the protection equipment required where there is the greatest need. We have daily communication with the individual municipalities and do everything we can. Large and small Danish companies have thrown themselves into the fight to have produced new protective equipment. It is a happy thing, that makes, that we are within a few days can get filled to the stocks up again.”
What it means for Helene Viftrup Jensen’s 82-year-old mother in the Home, there is still no answer.
