BENGALURU: With four of their fraternity testing positive at the Victoria Hospital, the nurses have complained to the hospital authorities about the poor quality of Personal Protective Equipment ( PPE) kits and even went up to Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar in this regard.So far there have been 13 positive cases of frontline workers at Victoria which include doctors, nurses, group D staff and lab technicians.
Among the 13 positives, four were nurses. Speaking to TNIE, a nurse said, “We are the frontline workers and need to be provided with good PPE kits. The ones provided were damaged. We believe that this could be the reason for the positive cases. Ideally, the inorganic or organic fluids should not enter the PPE. But this was not the case with the kits we were provided. That is why we decided to raise our voice and even spoke to minister Sudhakar about it.”
The nurse said, “The hospital management said that we were provided with good quality kits. However, they are many kits which come through sponsors. Those are not checked properly and don’t meet the PPE standards. In the beginning we would get PPE kits of high quality, but now it is not so.”Though the PPE kits should bear the 16603 ISO mark, the nurses said the kits didn’t have the mark. The nurses decided to stop work until good quality kits were provided. However, they resumed work after the minister’s assurance that he will sort it out.
Dr Smitha Segu, Task Force Head and Nodal Officer for Covid-19 at Victoria Hospital, said, “It is not because of PPE kits, there could be other reasons. We have a technical team which checks on the quality. The doctors are given the PPE kits to wear for six hours and give feedback, based on which we select the company which can provide us the kits.”