RMCH interns demanding protective gear join work after 4 hours

Four hours after stopping work, in demand of personal protective equipment (PPE), interns at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital have joined back.

The interns started attending to patients around noon after authorities supplied masks, gloves and sanitisers to some of them who work at the vulnerable units, Iqbal Hasan, general secretary of RMCH Interns' Council, told our Rajshahi staff correspondent.

After around 200 interns of the hospital stopped attending to patients around 8:00am, Iqbal said. "We have quarantined ourselves."

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 dillydallying 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, 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 70s and had underlying health conditions. He was infected by one of his relatives who returned from Italy recently.