Doctors and healthcare professionals are among the frontline warriors who are working day in and day out to treat people infected with deadly COVID-19. This puts these medical professionals at greater risk of being infected with the virus. To protect themselves, they need a good quality of personal protection equipment (PPE) kits. However, there are several news reports regarding how India’s healthcare workers faced a shortage of these kits. Some of them even had to use raincoats and garbage bags. Several causalities among doctors were also reported. This is when a campaign called ‘We Doctors’ – an initiative by Radiologist, founder of Medscape India, Dr Sunita Dube – started providing these kits to doctors.
“As there were many casualties amongst the doctors, it becomes a necessity to provide them with proper protection too. The Campaign is committed to making available hazmat suits or PPE for the safety of the doctors,” said Dr Sunita Dube.
She felt the urgency of providing these kits to doctors even before Indians started getting infected with it. She started the campaign in the mid of February at the national level to help doctors.
“I realized that many of the doctors are unable to come because they don’t have enough PPE to help them out,” the doctor said.
According to the radiologist, every doctor deserves safety while working, whether it is a private, government or general practitioner from COVID-19 and there’s a large number of patients which are being handled by doctors in private clinics and hospitals which is approximately 80 per cent outpatient care and 60 per cent inpatient care in India, which are exposed to the virus and their complications in the current situation.
“With the ‘We Doctors’ campaign, we started raising funds and got 10000 PPE in the first slot and that was distributed to Kurla East doctors and a few to the Chembur, Vatsalatai Naik Nagar and Thakkar Bappa Colony all these areas where the infection was spreading in a large amount. As we said, it’s a national campaign, so we have a team of doctors in various states like in Rajasthan, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra & other places, we gave them lots of PPE so that they can help the people on their own community by providing them sanitizer, mask, gloves, and regular screening fever,” she said.
Not only doctors, but she is also extending help to every needy person who can’t afford masks and sanitizers to fight against the coronavirus. Many Bollywood celebrities like Shilpa Shetty, Bharati Singh, and others too have extended support to make “We Doctors” not just a campaign but a movement.