Healthcare staff who have worked through the coronavirus crisis should have a similar mental health service as that offered to war veterans, a group of leading medical organisations, including DAUK, has said.

Read the full article here.

The pandemic has demonstrated how vital the contribution of international staff is for the NHS. 1 in 7 healthcare workers is from overseas. They have carried out their jobs in extremely difficult conditions, risking their lives during this crisis despite being on temporary visas. The government made a promise that bereaved families would get permanent residency status if these workers were to die due to COVID-19. Such a bereavement scheme is hurtful for the overseas workers who have fought so bravely. These workers bring highly specialised and sought after experience in addition to contributing to our economy through their taxes, investment in property etc.Currently indefinite leave to remain (ILR) is granted to the families of healthcare workers if they die. This sends a message that these heroic people only deserve recognition in the event of their dying in service, which is simply not in keeping the British Values of Fairness. These heroes deserve the right to call the UK their home and should not have to die to have this recognised. The French have granted citizenship to key workers – the UK cannot be seen to lag behind! On 5th March 2021 we are set to celebrate NHS Overseas Workers to recognise the efforts of ALL our international staff –  which is not limited to doctors and nurses but includes huge numbers of vital clinical, laboratory, clerical and estates staff. We invite Sunday Times readers to join us in acknowledging this extraordinary group of people.

Dr Pushpo Hossain, Doctors’ Association UK

As featured in The Sunday Times

Find out more about Overseas NHS Workers Day and how you can get involved here

The NHS could be forced to waste coronavirus vaccines if it does not offer leeway for medics to vaccinate beyond the designated at-risk groups.

The current cohort is group seven of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s priority list, which takes in 60- to 64-year-olds. Over-65s, health workers, the clinically vulnerable, and care home residents should already have been offered the jab.

But the success and speed of the vaccination programme has seen some of those delivering it left with empty clinics and spare doses after reaching the end of the list for their eligible cohorts, and now medics are asking for permission to continue vaccinating into the next group should that occur.

Dr Rosie Shire, who works as a GP in Cheshire, has also been running a pop-up vaccination clinic. The uptake has been so successful that a few weeks ago, she finished vaccinating cohort 4 and asked if she could progress to cohort 5.

Dr Shire says this was refused and her clinic was informed it must help other local practices by diverting any leftover vaccines.

Diverting supplies to places in need, as the guidance states, sounds sensible but in practice it can be difficult to arrange at short notice given the vaccine’s short shelf life and the sub-zero temperatures that the Pfizer vials must be kept at.

Dr Shire, who has transported the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine for home visits, said: “I believe there has been a list of limitations on moving it between vaccine sites.”

Dr Shire has been careful not to risk any wastage, but says she has heard rumours of places that have had to throw away doses because of these rules.

Dr Shire says there were also unconfirmed rumours earlier in the programme that anyone who reached the end of their cohort would not be paid for delivering second vaccinations ahead of the official go-ahead, and even risked losing their licences.

She said: “If you could say: ‘Well, you know what, let’s use some second vaccines in this case because there’s three people in the clinic next door who can just have it,’ then it would be done.”

She says the issue is creating bottlenecks each time a new cohort is sanctioned, before once again trickling to a halt while the rest of the country catches up.

Speaking on behalf of the Doctors’ Association, she told HuffPost UK: “We had a backup plan, we had it from early on. When you are actually holding a vial, it feels like gold. You’re so scared of dropping it because you know they are so precious. We just do not want them to go to waste – they definitely need to be used.”

Dr Shire’s clinic recently reached the end of its quota for the day and found itself in possession of a spare dose.  

She said: “The vaccine clinic I’ve worked in is in a big community building which has a library and leisure services. I had one dose left and I knew it needed to be used. I rushed around and found the manager of that building and we gave it to him. We reasoned he is going to be public-facing and he’s in a community role. I was trying to think creatively.

“It’s going to be hard for someone who finds themselves with three doses left at the end of the day. I was determined not to waste it but that was my choice. Someone else might have to go straight home at the end of the day, so what do you do?”

Read the article in full here

In response to Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s statement regarding his unlawful management of PPE during the pandemic: ‘I won’t apologise because to apologise would imply that I’d do something differently’ DAUK’s Dr Katie Sanderson spoke out:

This is a pandemic not an election

How are we going to learn from this if we can’t be honest about what happened? It’s grossly offensive to the families of healthcare workers who got COVID and died, and I think it should be retracted immediately. 

Can you imagine what it feels like if you are the son or daughter of a doctor who died after getting COVID at work to hear that?

Dr Katie Sanderson – LBC Radio

38% of doctors who should have had FFP3 masks were saying they didn’t have them
47% saying they did not have access to long sleeved gowns 
>20% didn’t have eye protection
>60% had not been fit tested, so even if they had an FFP3 mask, it may not be protecting them because it may not have fitted 

Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden appeared on This Morning where she reacted to Conservative MP Desmond Swayne, who encouraged anti-vaxxers and said the NHS were “exaggerating”

Shaking her head, Dr Samantha replied: “I just can’t even, when you’re a member of the NHS and you are giving your all and spending 16 hours in PPE and working seven days a week, working yourself into the ground to keep patients safe.

“To hear that from somebody representing the government is really upsetting and it’s not acceptable, the pictures that you see of ambulances, queues down the road, they are real, and they have sick patients inside.

“And if the Tory MP wants to see that they are very welcome to volunteer in my ICU, where we are short-staffed, to help turn patients on to their fronts, so that they can fight for their lives.”

“And if the Tory MP wants to see that they are very welcome to volunteer in my ICU, where we are short-staffed, to help turn patients on to their fronts, so that they can fight for their lives.”

Read the report in The Mirror here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/doctor-begs-covid-sceptical-tory-23400306

Dr Gregor Smith, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland replied here:

“Just getting up for my night shift that I’ve had to pick up because two of our colleagues have come down with COVID and so now there is a rota gap.”

“I caught COVID in the first wave and I followed all the COVID PPE guidelines, you know, all the PPE that I had couldn’t stop me from getting COVID. I felt really sad and scared for the people who were saying that they did not have PPE because it’s just such a terrible disease. It’s very scary.”

Dr Pushpo Hossain

“This is the story of the UK government’s desperate 12 billion pound scramble to kit out the NHS for COVID. And the tens of millions of items of PPE bought at taxpayers expense that now can’t be used as planned. It’s pretty devastating for those who work on the front line and know so much money is being wasted when it could have been invested in our frontline services.”

The NHS is an international health service that relies on some 170,000 foreign born staff from more than 200 countries.

Many non-British members of NHS staff have visas to allow them to live and work in the UK which can be extended by a year – but that is nowhere near enough to plan a future around.

Now there are calls for frontline staff from overseas to have the right to stay in the UK indefinitely in recognition for their service during the most challenging of years.

Nurse Eva Omondi is one of those dedicated professionals who came to the UK to work for the NHS and joined the fight against coronavirus.

“Seeing how [patients] die, it’s been very emotionally draining,” she said. 

Added to the stress however, was the anxiety over her right to remain in the country she would like to make her permanent home.She said: “The risk and the stress of working in the pandemic is enough price to pay to just ask for indefinite leave to remain.”The government brought in visas to make it easier for health workers to come to the UK and – after pressure from Ms Omondi and other nurses – abolished the fees they used to pay to use the health service. 

But campaigners say none of that goes far enough to reward their sacrifice in our service.

Within months of starting work in the UK, Bangladeshi doctor Pushpo Hossein contracted Covid-19.

“I got high fevers, body ache,” she said. 

“I also developed shortness of breath and that was very scary.”

Dr Pushpo Hossain

If she had died, her husband would have been granted the right to stay in the UK. But she said that is hardly an incentive to continue working for the NHS. 

“So that make me think, so okay, I have to die to prove my loyalty,” she said. 

“I feel betrayed sometimes. I feel very heartbroken.”

Last month, a private members bill that would offer indefinite leave to remain to NHS workers was halted under Common’s Covid safety rules. But the campaign continues.Liberal Democrat MP Christine Jardine, who brought the bill to Parliament, said: “We hear every-day about NHS staff who are contracting Covid-19. 

“People who are doing that shouldn’t’ have to live with any possibility that they might be deported. That’s just not good enough.”

(David Oliver – NHS Consultant Physician writes) The High Court ruled last week that Matt Hancock had acted unlawfully in failing to publish details, within 30 days, of dozens of contracts awarded without competition for good and services – especially PPE during the pandemic. 

In his interview since, the Health Secretary didn’t seem bothered or sorry. 

He came out all guns blazing, laughing it off, running down the studio clock by saying his focus during Spring 2020 had been on “saving lives” and working tirelessly to procure the best PPE, as if that made the law breaking okay.

There was no apology. No acknowledgement that he had done anything wrong or breached the ministerial code or Nolan Principles for public office, which require honesty, integrity and transparency.

But PPE supplies to frontline staff in health and social care are no laughing matter and the court ruling is the latest in a long line of Government PPE failings.

A BMJ Study in December showed that hands on staff working with patients are around 7 times more likely to be admitted to hospital as Covid-19 patients than people in other roles. Thousands more are still suffering from “long Covid”.

It is a basic moral and legal requirement for employers to give staff in any job the equipment they need to stay safe at work. And NHS staff are government employees or contractors. 

We have come into work surrounded by Covid-19 week after week for year now. We don’t need applause. We don’t want “hero” status for doing our jobs. But we do feel badly let down and Hancock’s attitude hardly helps.

The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee concluded this month that many healthcare workers had been “put in the appalling situation of having to care for people with Covid-19 without sufficient PPE to protect themselves from infection” and that “as PPE stocks ran perilously low” some were “forced to re-use single use items”.

The PAC also found that social care staff in care homes and home care services had struggled even more to get the right PPE, with the NHS being prioritised. Theirs is very hands on work, going from home to home or room to room to care for vulnerable citizens for low pay.

November’s National Audit Office report on Covid-19 procurement condemned, in unusually strong terms, the Government’s serial incompetence, lack of transparency, slow responses and poor value for public money in procuring PPE from the private sector. 

It was clear that there had been cronyism, with many contracts going to friends or party donors.

The Doctors’ Association UK has collected responses from over 1500 members about failings in supplying them with basic PPE items and another 200 members who were ignored, threatened, silenced or bullied by local bosses when they complained.

Read the full article here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/david-oliver-ppe-supplies-frontline-23553116