Doctors, who work with patients with coronavirus, are in complete isolation. They ask their friends and acquaintances to bring food. They also ask for help from the population with protective equipment, which is almost gone. The authorities still claim that there is no coronavirus in Tajikistan, and therefore they don’t provide any assistance to hospitals.
In an interview with ACCA, a source in the Health Administration of Sogd region said that today the number of people with coronavirus in the region has reached 718 people. According to him, so that these statistics do not grow, the ambulance service refuses to hospitalize patients with a mild form of the disease, recommending that they be treated at home. Only seriously ill patients are taken to the hospital. At the same time, according to the source, no quarantine regime is introduced for families of patients who are at home.
“In fact, they are potential carriers of infection,” he emphasized. “In addition, the main carriers of the infection are fundraisers for utilities, who go home and collect money, but the main problem is cash, which is used by almost everyone. It’s through the money that every inhabitant of the country can get infected.”
The source also noted that in other hospitals that continue to work as usual, doctors are forbidden to wear protective suits, as a result of which doctors refuse to work in such conditions and leave.
“The problem is that three hospitals, that accept only patients with coronavirus, are already crowded, and we had to find additional places for hospitalization,” the official said. “For this, we have released several departments in other hospitals, but today even they are all crowded. Therefore, the doctors of these hospitals, even working in other departments, are afraid to work without protective equipment. Of course, we understand them, because only in the regional hospital during last 4 days, 17 people died from coronavirus.”
In an interview with ACCA, a doctor of one of the hospitals said that today they are forced to look for protective equipment on their own.
“The chief doctors of hospitals and department heads are independently looking for protective suits, asking their friends and acquaintances for help,” the doctor said. “We have no other choice, since the state doesn’t help us, because officially the authorities don’t recognize the existence of a coronavirus in the country.”
In addition, the doctor noted that the medical staff is experiencing acute food shortages, because the hospital budgets have already exhausted their resources, and there is no help from the authorities.
“Every day I ask my friends and acquaintances to help than they can, because I have nothing to feed my employees with,” the doctor said, unable to restrain his tears. “Being completely isolated, we don’t know what to do and how to feed the huge staff who have been fighting for the lives of people for days.”
According to the doctor, people have already begun to bring food and protective equipment, but so far this is not enough, since the situation is getting worse every day. He also noted that none of the leadership of the region or the Health Department had ever visited the hospital to see the real situation.
“We were promised that infectious disease specialists would come, train us, bring equipment, create all conditions, and our task would be only to help them,” the doctor emphasized. “However, none of this happened, and today absolutely unprepared personnel with different qualifications are forced to work in terrible conditions. The authorities had 5 months to prepare for this situation, but they did nothing. We also have no pay rise, again due to the fact that there is no official coronavirus in the country.”
The doctor also said that many health workers who, without having passed the training immediately fell into extreme conditions, began to lose their nerves.
“Young nurses have never experienced such horror. They often cry. They start to panic,” the doctor says. “I was already tired of getting sedatives to put them in order, and they could continue their work. Today, 9 out of 10 hospital staff need psychological help. If they knew the conditions under which they would work, they would have quit immediately, but the leadership of the Health Department told us at the very beginning that criminal cases would be brought against those who refused to fulfill their professional duties and would be held accountable. Therefore, everyone under pain is forced to continue working in these unbearable conditions.”
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