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Thursday, May 29, 2025

The fading frontline applause

by

659 days ago
20230809
Wesley Gibbings

Wesley Gibbings

At 10 am on April 9, 2020, many of us stood and ap­plaud­ed in sol­i­dar­i­ty with “front­line” work­ers en­gaged in beat­ing back an ad­vanc­ing COVID-19 threat.

I am us­ing the word “many” and not “most” be­cause I was aware then of sev­er­al in­flu­en­tial fac­tors —rang­ing from out­right de­nial to the as­ser­tion that all of this was need­less pan­ic and “overkill”—all serv­ing to tem­per en­thu­si­asm for the sym­bol­ic ex­er­cise.

Self-de­clared vi­rol­o­gists, pub­lic health ex­perts, and sundry char­la­tans were ag­gres­sive­ly chim­ing in to chal­lenge the views of most of the world’s top med­ical sci­en­tists, in­clud­ing our fine pro­fes­sion­als right here.

Lat­er that year, as pol­i­tics be­came in­creas­ing­ly aligned with di­rect chal­lenges to pan­dem­ic mea­sures, there was the out­ra­geous sug­ges­tion that all of this had been “man­u­fac­tured fear.”

So, there we were, in April 2020, stand­ing near the fence so that we could hear the sounds of the chil­dren next door as we ap­plaud­ed and cheered. We knew and un­der­stood that many oth­ers were not fol­low­ing suit, so there was a mea­sure of hov­er­ing sad­ness.

Now, let me say from now, that I con­sid­er none of the de­trac­tors to have be­haved as they did be­cause they are out­right evil folks with no re­gard for the lives of oth­ers.

But I felt strong­ly that the peo­ple who were out there fac­ing an un­cer­tain, pos­si­bly dead­ly risk – for there was much that re­mained un­known to every­one – were ex­hibit­ing hero­ic fea­tures that need­ed to be recog­nised and ap­plaud­ed.

Close to 40 months and over 4,300 lives lat­er, the ap­plause has large­ly fad­ed. The last record­ed COVID-19 deaths oc­curred in May. The “death with” and “death from” Google and Chat GPT ex­perts, along with the “they would have died any­way” crowds can car­ry on with their cal­lous non­sense, even as fam­i­lies con­tin­ue to grieve.

To­day, not on­ly has the cheer­ing end­ed, but we have re­sumed our mer­ry ways with renowned in­dif­fer­ence to the state of af­fairs when it comes to our “he­roes” of April 2020.

Against the back­drop of the cur­rent ag­i­ta­tion of the Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, to­day’s at­ten­tion turns ex­clu­sive­ly to these peo­ple in our pub­lic health sys­tem who earned our ap­plause at a rather low point in our na­tion­al life.

I have lis­tened care­ful­ly to as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Idi Stu­art, and spoke di­rect­ly with him on Mon­day in an at­tempt to get to the bot­tom of his or­gan­i­sa­tion’s grous­es that have gen­er­at­ed a large­ly de­fi­cient of­fi­cial re­sponse.

For one, I do not know where the im­pres­sion was giv­en that more mon­ey (as im­por­tant as it is) is at the cen­tre of the points of cur­rent con­tention. It seems to me that the main is­sues, val­i­dat­ed by suc­ces­sive re­ports on the sub­ject of pub­lic health­care, re­volve around things such as main­te­nance of key as­sets (in­clud­ing am­bu­lances and oth­er equip­ment), and the ques­tion of pa­tient-to-staff ra­tios.

The Seemu­n­gal Com­mit­tee Re­port, which fo­cused large­ly on pa­tient care at the height of the pan­dem­ic one year ago, and there­fore re­flect­ed a worst-case sce­nario, iden­ti­fied some key flash­points re­flect­ed in suc­ces­sive stud­ies and in­quiries un­der non-emer­gency cir­cum­stances.

We can al­so ref­er­ence the 1994 Health Sec­tor Re­form Re­port and en­su­ing de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion leg­is­la­tion, and the Gladys Gafoor en­quiry of 2010.

There was al­so the Win­ston Welch Re­port of 2017, which fo­cused on the dy­nam­ics of pri­vate med­ical prac­tice with­in the con­text of a so­cialised pub­lic health sys­tem—an inar­guably, vast­ly su­pe­ri­or ap­proach to eq­ui­table ac­cess to the ben­e­fits of med­ical sci­ence.

Even in ex­am­in­ing this, the 2017 re­port cit­ed the chal­lenges of re­sources, in­clud­ing per­son­nel.

Al­most all of the con­cerns be­tween 1994 and 2022 are cur­rent­ly cap­tured in the ad­vo­ca­cy of the Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion. Some of these in­clude pa­tient-to-staff ra­tios at the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, chron­ic is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and oth­er sup­plies, to­geth­er with in­fra­struc­tur­al short­com­ings.

If any­body should be writ­ing to oth­er stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss these mat­ters, it should be the Min­istry of Health, act­ing in con­cert with the RHAs. It is un­for­tu­nate that pub­lic ad­vo­ca­cy on this should so rou­tine­ly find peo­ple with plac­ards chant­i­ng slo­gans along­side strange friends in the streets.

Again, no­body is ques­tion­ing any­one’s good in­ten­tions here. It is just that there are un­de­ni­able needs in a sin­gu­lar­ly im­por­tant area of na­tion­al life that re­quire at­ten­tion.

It should not be that in a sec­tor as im­por­tant as this—from the Gas­par Grande Re­port of 1978 to Gafoor, Welch, Seemu­n­gal and the Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion’s plac­ards of 2023, all span­ning nu­mer­ous po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions and decades – there should be a re­gur­gi­ta­tion of iden­ti­cal is­sues.

Why is the front­line ap­plause fad­ing?


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