Health care workers in Germany have found a unique way to protest against the scarcity of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and are baring it all in order to raise awareness about the problems that they are facing amidst the COVID-19 crisis.
On the German website known as "Blanke Bedenken," doctors, nurses and healthcare workers are posing pictures with nothing but stethoscopes, tissue rolls, medical equipment and even anatomical skeletons to cover themselves.
According to a statement by the organizers of the said protest in the website, the GPs are calling to the people that as doctors they need to have protective gear in order to be able to treat patients. They also said that if they run out of the few pieces of equipment that they have, they will be practically naked whilst battling the pandemic.
Worldwide scarcity of PPE
As the novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world, there has been a global shortage for proper PPEs for healthcare frontliners to use.
The Blanke Bekenden group also stressed that without the said PPEs they will be vulnerable to the virus and that they are asking for more support coming from the government.
In a statement released by Germany's Federal Ministry of Health through a spokesman, they said that due to the rapid rise of coronavirus infections worldwide, there is an increase in the demand for medical supplies including PPEs such as gloves, breathing masks, a hazmat suit and many more. This increase in demand caused a shortage of supply globally.
He also added that the Federal Ministry of health is already organizing the distribution of medical supplies in cooperation with a German logistics provider to federal states and the Association of Statutory Health Insurance. The spokesman also noted that the Federal Ministry of Health has already distributed around 113 million face masks by the end of last week.
On top of this, Germany has already received a shipment of 10 million facemasks from China on Monday. There are also another two flights that have been chartered by the German military which is expected to bring 15 million protective masks to the country since wearing facemasks is now mandatory in public places.
As of last week, restrictions that have been placed in Germany amidst the coronavirus outbreak has slowly been halted. Some establishments have been allowed to reopen as long as they fall within the guidelines set by the state.
As of the moment, CNN stated that they were unable to confirm the website's authenticity yet. They also added that they were not able to confirm the specific affiliations of those who posted their pictures on the website. The news outlet also noted that they have received no responses from the representatives of the website.
Moreover, it remains unclear on which government agency or institution the said doctors who posed for the website deem responsible for the equipment that they lack. At the moment, any inquiries made in the site are directly answered by an automated response talking about the volume of inquiries.
Related article : Trump Reveals Strategy to Ramp Up COVID-19 Testing
