The fading frontline applause

At 10 a.m. 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 health care, 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?