The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) said on Wednesday that while cases of the corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic fell by a third in the Americas, including the Caribbean, this week, health care workers continue to face challenging conditions due to systems that are unprepared to support them.
“When cases surge exponentially, as they have in the past few weeks, the burden falls mostly on the people that power our health systems. For them, there is nothing mild about this Omicron wave,” said PAHO director, Dr Carissa F. Etienne said during a news conference.
The Dominican-born PAHO official said that with infections reaching 4.8 million, a 31 per cent drop from last week, but 33, 000 new deaths, the region remains in the grip of the latest COVID-19 wave and urged countries to harness the lessons learned from the pandemic so far as clinics and hospitals once again become full.
“Years of underinvestment in our health services, aging information systems and poor labour conditions made our health workers’ jobs challenging,” Etienne said, highlighting that these disadvantages were only exacerbated by COVID-19.
A PAHO study launched this week shows that over the course of the pandemic, doctors, nurses, and other frontline health workers saw more patients, worked longer hours, and suffered higher rates of COVID-19 infection.
