As intensive care units crowded, health professionals relive trauma in Rondônia – 02/18/2022 – Equilíbrio e Saúde

Nurse Rihanna Almeida, 32, left the family at the scene Porto Velho In January 2020 to join for three months the task force of professionals who strengthened the health teams in Amazon. It was the most dangerous period of the epidemic, and many Patients died without oxygen in Intensive care units.

“I have seen many deaths. Everyone who has worked with me Corona virus disease The condition has not improved and is still not well,” she says. When the family contracted the virus, she decided to return to Rondonia the following month.

In Porto Velho, he found “hospitals full of people, many vehicles scattered throughout the city and whole health units”. Even with some improvement, a year later, the nurse says she still sees many patients in the hospital, and among them a large portion of them refuse vaccination or have not completed a course of immunization.

Rondonia It is one of the Brazilian states with highest capacity in ICUs for Covid in this year. Already the state Reached 92% occupancy this month From the family to the most serious cases.

The number of daily cases remained high, with an average of 2,247 cases between February 6 and 12, according to a survey by the Covid research group at the Federal University of Rondônia. There have already been 6,972 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

In recent weeks, housewife Angela Jacker Maya has been with one of her four children at the field hospital. The structure, which was set up in January 2021 to serve the excess number of patients in critical condition, has yet to be dismantled.

Maya is a resident of the southern region, in the district of Castanheira, an area that has seen many deaths and infections with Covid last year. The 13-year-old son was taken to the hospital Pneumonia and influenza.

She said she had to resort to Public Ministry To get a bed for her son. “He stayed in the ward, he didn’t have to go to the ICU. But I was afraid I would be Covid and lose my son. In the field hospital there weren’t many people like last year, at least where I saw him.”

Nursing technician Lucas Rodriguez, 27, works at Cemetron (Rondonia Center for Tropical Medicine), where the largest ICU structure is located. say that Working during the pandemic has harmed his mental health. Since the beginning of the spread of Covid, he has been on the front line.

The health worker contracted the virus in March 2021, and shortly after the mother contracted it too, in the same period, but they were not taken to the hospital. Nevertheless, he continued to work, but began to take sleeping pills.

“I had a lot of insomnia, and was treated with controlled medication to sleep. I would wake up in the middle of the night, scared. I had nightmares about death,” he says.

The feeling remains. “I used to sleep peacefully, I slept peacefully. Now it’s different. Sometimes I control a little, get out of the apartment, breathe and come back. I even calm down. I despair, but I try to calm down.”

Lucas said the state government is providing psychological support to all health care workers. “I need treatment, but I’m not ready yet.” He says he is afraid to face treatments.

Flory Menezes, medical director at Rondonia Field Hospital, a physician for ten years, contracted his wife, Covid, in November of last year. The two had to be isolated from their children, but hospital treatment was not needed. He has also lost friends to the virus and has seen many deaths among young and old.

“We worked in a scenario with many deaths, in addition to the usual. It was very different from everything we normally see on a daily basis. We ask that this epidemic never go back to what it was before.”

The GP says he and his colleagues couldn’t stop working, even though they knew their mental health wasn’t good.

“We worked because our mission was to save someone in need, but also with a worried head, thinking: ‘I wonder if I’ll be next on the death list? What about my family members?'” Menezes says.

“We were working and the other day we found out that his colleague was ill and needed intubation. All the professionals were shaken.”

According to him, the current situation is to provide more beds and supplies than in 2021. However, the fatigue of the teams is weighing in two years after the pandemic.

Governor Marcos Rocha (PSL) is the president’s ally Jair Bolsonaro (PL)Compulsory vaccination is prohibited by decree Compulsory vaccination permit.

With the high capacities of the intensive care units, the scientific committee of the University of Rondonia recommends caution by the residents. “The high level of infection in the population has resulted in outpatient and hospitalization requests, which affects the statistics and case projections.”

“There is an urgent need to deploy and adopt effective strategies to achieve adequate coverage of vaccines with two objectives: to protect the population from development to serious cases and deaths due to Covid-19, and secondly, to prevent the emergence of new variants, which, in this case, could perpetuate the current epidemiological situation,” he says. Final scenario analysis report for the committee.