Chad’s National Order of Medical Doctors has raised an alarm against the lack of protective equipment for medical personnel in the forefront of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a communiqué issued on Monday the group questioned why protective medical gears for its members and others were taking so long in coming.
“The inexplicable silence of the authorities concerning this issue has forced us to ask the question publicly,” the group said.
“We can no longer continue to be contented with promises and risk seeing our colleagues and collaborators continue to die one by one,” it said .
The association urged the government to take “measures to ensure that medical personnel are really trained in large numbers throughout the country, equipped and motivated in an equitable and just manner”.
It suggested that integrated epidemiological surveillance teams be reinforced and put in place in all the 23 provinces of the country for the active search for contacts with identified cases and collection of viable statistical information.
It also called for real and sufficient means to be given to the scientific committee and other technical commissions for them to carry out their work and for clinicians to be allowed to do their work with valid protocol within the Scientific Council.
The group recalled that since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Chad, about 29 medical doctors involved in the fight against the pandemic had been contaminated by the virus and some medical personnel died.
Chad has so far registered 170 COVID-19 cases with 43 successfully treated and discharged from hospital while 17 have died.
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