In addition to healthcare professionals, there is another group of people at the frontlines of the global crisis caused by COVID-19. They put their lives at risk every day and play a critical role in preventing the spread of the virus, by ensuring our streets, parks, public spaces, sewers, septic tanks, communities, and public toilets are kept clean and hygienic.
They are our often-overlooked sanitation workers. These five million public health and safety workers—who continue to work through the COVID-19 pandemic—are unprotected, stigmatised, unappreciated, and seen as people to be shunned.
While we recognise that frontline staff in hospitals and health facilities face a dire shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), the need of the hour is also to find ways to provide sanitation workers with the following necessities: masks (at the very least, double-layered stitched cloth masks), rubber gloves, aprons, protective footwear or boots, sanitiser, and soap.
Hence our NURTURE Team directly reached the sanitation workers working at various locations in Trichy and distributed personal protective equipment to nearly 300 sanitation workers (one pair of gloves, 500 ml handwash solution and a reusable double layered mask inserted with filter paper).
Also, Lecture on Covid 19 and the importance of usage of PPE was delivered to the sanitation workers on 10.04.2020 at BHEL Township by Dr A Ezhil / Head (Anesthesiology) BHEL, after distributing the PPE to them.
