For the past 11 years of practising medicine, Dr Olugunoye Ajibola has never seen anything close to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this is not surprising.
For many health workers across the globe, pandemics were only a subject they read in books and studied while in school – until the COVID-19 pandemic came.
Ajibola, a public health physician and epidemiologist who works at an isolation centre in Osogbo, Osun State, described working as a frontline health worker treating COVID-19 patients as being on a battlefield. He said, “Any human being wants freedom, and this is the case for the patients. When they are admitted to the isolation centre, we have to first lecture them on why they are there. We have to explain to them that the disease is new and that we are keeping them there because we don’t want them to infect others. We tell them that they may not die, but if they infect others, others may die.
“It’s natural to be afraid of getting infected, so we have to be cautious. Thankfully, at the isolation centre where I am, we have enough PPE and I think it has helped us to be bolder to fight this disease. We also do tests on ourselves after a week or two to know if we have got infected,” he said. But being on the frontline has had a toll on his family.
The indigene of Cross River State lamented that he might not be able to see his son anytime soon if the number of COVID-19 cases kept rising in the country. “Funnily enough, many people believe all these misinformation. For us health workers, any misinformation or falsehood can put more pressure on us because more people will not take precautions and they will be getting infected and still be in denial.”Be that as it may, Egorp said his wife understood his new assignment and he always looked forward to speaking with her after his daily 12-hour shift.
He stated, “Her children were with her and they were approaching to greet me. She asked where I had been all this while, and I told her I had been working at a COVID-19 isolation centre. She practically held her kids backwards and did not allow them to approach me. I laughed initially but later I felt bad and I know that it will continue until this period is over.”
For another frontline health worker, Mr Hassan Ankuma, a pharmacist who has practised for 19 years and works at an isolation centre in Abuja, treating COVID-19 patients has altered his normal way of life. Similarly, a medical laboratory scientist at one of the isolation centres in Rivers State, Mrs Favour Amadi, said she sometimes feared she might get infected with coronavirus even though she always took all the necessary precautions.
Speaking on the traumatic experience he faced battling the virus, Bala noted that at a point many of the health workers couldn’t return to their homes to see their loved ones out of the fear of infecting them. “This was because we made an assumption that we were all positive so we tried to avoid one another and our family members. The logic was that if one of us eventually got infected, the risk of transmitting the disease to colleagues and family members before developing the symptoms and getting tested would be significantly reduced. I think it worked and gave us the confidence to be safe.”Speaking further, Bala said the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the state’s health care system.
According to the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, around 113 frontline health workers were infected with the coronavirus as of April 30, 2020. In the United States, more than 60,000 health workers were infected, and close to 300 died from COVID-19, according to data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
He said, “The situation in which our health workers are is a precarious one and what comes into play now is the personality of each individual to cope with the crisis. This situation can provoke fear and emotional imbalance, and extra-sensory perception. A frontline health worker might be imagining themselves falling sick. It can be traumatic.
“When a person finds themselves in a situation and it appears there is no alternative, the best thing is to condition themselves to cope with the situation. There are methods for doing this. For instance, family members of frontline health workers can communicate with their loved ones via all the various technological platforms,” the don said.
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