From Reims to Lyon via Marseille, Lille, Colmar or Montreuil, French healthcare staff are now reporting, after masks and medication, a significant shortage of gowns. However, essential equipment to protect them.
Between 31 March and 4 April, the National Union of Nursing Professionals (SNPI CFE-CGC) carried out an online survey on the lack of materials in hospitals, collecting 32,047 responses. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), which released the survey on Tuesday, more than half of the healthcare staff questioned (59%) thus noted a lack of gowns.
For the SNPI, these results are “far from the pretty tales of the government”, which has communicated many times about its destocking and its massive orders.
Emmanuel Macron, on Tuesday visiting the multidisciplinary health center in Pantin, in Seine-Saint-Denis, was directly confronted with this new need. A manager explained to him that his team lacked some basic equipment, with “great difficulties for the overalls”.
“I do not have enough,” testified a nurse, indicating that she washed her two blouses “every night” to take them in turns.
The president then replied that the caregivers were doing a “formidable” job and that the State was seeking to “relieve” them by “multiplying” production and imports. “Even the best-thought-out plans did not envisage that the countries would be affected at the same time,” he added to justify the deficit in masks and equipment.
“What we thought was worthless six months or a year ago, all of a sudden” has become rare, he said.
“The situation is extremely tense”
“In terms of gowns, the situation is extremely tense,” confirmed Frédéric Adnet, chief of emergency at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) and medical director of Samu 93, interviewed Tuesday on BFMTV.
“We are using those in the operating room, as the operating programs have been abandoned for non-emergency operations. We use all the overcoats available but there is real tension …”, he added.
Same story from Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), where mayor Patrice Bessac called on Friday, to the solidarity of its citizens to donate to the hospital of its city of gowns.
“I am today launching an urgent appeal to businesses in Montreuil, particularly restaurants, paint and chemical companies,” said PCF mayor in a video posted on Twitter. “Our hospital urgently needs overcoats to keep caregivers safe in the coming days,” he added.
The Hospital #Montreuil urgently needs #surblouses for caregivers and calls for donations: gowns, long-sleeved aprons, disposable coveralls, charlottes, overshoes.
➡️Send an email to [email protected]# COVID19 pic.twitter.com/mdcpv0biXL– Patrice Bessac (@PatriceBessac) April 3, 2020
–
Last week is the Lille University Hospital Center who already announced sorely lacking disposable paper overcoats to protect caregivers.
“We only have four days left in stock!” Summarized the hospital’s emergency chief, Patrick Goldstein, in The voice of the North.
In Marseille, if the nursing staff were able to receive overcoats, it turned out that some of them were defective. In two videos posted on social networks last weekend, the nurses at the Marseilles hospital in La Timone thus showed that by trying on protective gowns, the latter left in tatters. The AP-HM (Public Assistance of the Hospitals of Marseille), in a press release issued Monday, acknowledged that these blouses were defective and assured that they had not been “used” and that they “have been replaced by products without any defect”.
Single-use overcoats, washed and reused
The shortage of this protective material is such that initiatives are multiplying to remedy this lack. In Reims, for example, caregivers will receive overcoats made from transparent trash bags, reported the daily last week The union.
Similar situation in Lyon, where the staff of the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL) received, last Friday, an email from its management in which was a tutorial for the “manufacture of aprons from transparent trash bags of 110 L “, revealed France 3 Auvergne Rhônes-Alpes. The management also asks its nursing staff to collect, wash and put back into service the single-use aprons and the single-use overcoats.
France 3 Auvergne Rhônes-Alpes has revealed that the HCL caregivers are invited “in units welcoming patients with COVID-19, to keep the same overcoat for a round of care, for several patients, if it is not soiled “.
In a Paris hospital, gowns are also rationed and reused, as witnessed by a nurse with Mediapart.
“Regarding the gowns, disposable as normal, well we are told that they are starting to run out since the beginning of the week, that it will be one per carer until further notice. We write our name on the Stabilo and we reuse as much as possible. We were already trying to reduce their use to the maximum at the beginning of the crisis. But there, it becomes derisory “, she told the investigative media.
In Colmar, the same thing, to make up for the shortage, single-use overcoats are washed and reused, as revealed The voice of the North.
Reuse encouraged by DGS
Lyon, Paris and Colmar all rely on the advice of the Directorate General for Health (DGS). The latter has, in fact, distributed a document to hospitals in which it is stipulated that “in the current context of massive use of gowns and in order to face the risk of shortage, the French society of hospital hygiene (SF2H) has delivered an opinion on the possibility of reusing single-use overcoats “.
The document then gives the steps to properly wash your overtime:
“It turns out that the treatment of long-sleeved waterproof single-use overcoats is acceptable provided that there is a specific circuit and that all of the following steps are followed
– Washing (at 60 ° C, time> 30min)
– Drum drying (at 50 ° C, 20 min)
– Integrity check
– Packaging (folding, sachet)
– Sterilization (autoclaving at 125 ° C for 20 min) “
Interviewed by CheckNews, the fact-checking service of Release, the DGS confirmed that this document, which circulates on social networks, is authentic. Bruno Grandbastien, president of SF2H, told CheckNews that washable and reusable blouses are those made of non-woven and waterproof material.
“They are coated on the outside, which allows them to withstand two or even three washes,” according to tests conducted by hospitals. “Those that are too thin would not resist. But there are validation criteria,” he explained.
5 million overcoats ordered
The DGS assured Mediapart that the Ministry of Health ordered, at the end of March, “more than 5 million gowns from different suppliers to meet the needs of caregivers”.
These orders are “intended to constitute the national strategic stock from which the Ministry of Health supplements the supply of health establishments, which have their own supply channel”.
The DGS however explained to the investigative media that the world production of this material is concentrated in Asia. However, “world production has been sharply reduced” since February, before the spread of the epidemic.
“This has led to strong tensions on the world market. For this product, as for many others, France is therefore facing the same difficulties as many of its neighbors,” concluded the Directorate General of Health.
–
:quality(100)//arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-infobae.s3.amazonaws.com/public/LK3L2W5QDZHVPFOEPGG25PRU7Q.jpg "Coronavirus in Mexico today: 2,961 deaths and 29,616 confirmed cases")
