Coronavirus: 'Exhausted' Wuhan nurses write open letter asking for international help

Two frontline Chinese nurses currently working in Wuhan, the epicentre of Coronavirus outbreak have written an open to letter to appeal for international help against the deadly viral outbreak. The epidemic has reportedly spread across more than 30 countries. According to reports, the epidemic has killed over 2,700 people worldwide, with the vast majority in mainland China. Also, there have been more than 80,000 global cases of the infection, international media reported.   

Severe shortage of equipment 

The open letter which was published in the medical journal, The Lancet, the two nurses, Yingchun Zeng and Yan Zhen wrote about the severe shortage of protective equipment, the everyday difficulties and the physical and mental exhaustion that the 14,000 nurses deployed in the city are facing. In the letter, they wrote that due to an extreme shortage of health-care professionals in Wuhan, 14,000 nurses from across China have voluntarily come to Wuhan to support local medical health-care professionals. They further wrote, “But we need much more help. We are asking nurses and medical staff from countries around the world to come to China now, to help us in this battle.” 

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The letter continued to reveal how exhausting and overwhelming the whole situation of combating Coronavirus is. The descriptive letter read, “The conditions and environment here in Wuhan are more difficult and extreme than we could ever have imagined. There is a severe shortage of protective equipment, such as N95 respirators, face shields, goggles, gowns, and gloves. The goggles are made of plastic that must be repeatedly cleaned and sterilised in the ward, making them difficult to see through.” 

Both the nurses who work in two different hospitals in the Chinese city of Guangzhou have been working in Wuhan for a month now. In the letter, they also described how difficult it was to treat Coronavirus patients in thick layers of protective clothing. “When wearing a mask to speak with patients, our voices are muted, so we have to speak very loudly. Wearing four layers of gloves is abnormally clumsy and does not work—we can’t even open the packaging bags for medical devices, so giving patients injections is a huge challenge,” they wrote.

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