More than 3000 nurses have died after contracting COVID since March 2020 in 60 countries.
A new report by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) reveal that more than 10 percent of total case fatality globally comprises healthcare workers.
The report observes that since March 11, 2020 when World health organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, millions of nurses have been reeling under the “mass trauma”.
The report and analysis by the ICN found that the swamped hospitals, staffing shortage and onslaught of COVID-19 patients since the last year has stressed and worn out the healthcare workers.
It notes that as many as 400 incidents of pandemic related violence and threat against the healthcare worker was recorded.
This has also pushed many to quit their profession.
At least 1,172 COVID-19 related incidents against the nurses were registered during their response to the pandemic.
The ICN report found:
“COVID-19-related attacks reveal a disturbing new dimension of violence against health care, which has in the past related primarily to attacks on health care amid armed conflict or routine health services provision.”
In a statement, the ICN chief executive Howard Catton said:
“Nurses have gone through ‘mass traumatisation’ during the pandemic, as hospitals were pushed to physical and mental exhaustion. They reach a point where they’ve given everything they can.”
Catton stated that the global workforce of the nurses at the hospitals during the pandemic drastically shrank to just 6 million from the previous 27 million, this included at least 4 million that were already looking for retirement by 2030.
