COVID-19: Nurses are at risk, facing incessant attacks, NANNM President laments

The President, National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), Comrade Michael Nnachi, has lamented that nurses are putting themselves at risk while playing their strategic roles as frontline workers in tackling the COVID-19 virus.

Besides, he regretted that despite playing the key roles in controlling the virus and carrying out their responsibilities, nurses have become an object of incessant attacks by members of the public, especially relations of patients.

While decrying the incessant attacks on nurses, the NANNM president also called for an end to all forms of gender discrimination and violence at places of work, especially those targeted at women.

He called on women to speak against discrimination and gender violence both at home an at work places, adding that events such as the celebration of International Women’s Day, have provided women and those in the area of gender balance to do so.

Nnachi, who was speaking on the role of nurses in the COVID-19 fight, said, “being frontline workers, nurses put themselves at risk and have played strategic roles in tackling the virus.”

He pointed out that despite the significant roles nurses were playing, they were sometimes not well appreciated, hence, nurses are being attacked while performing their duties.

He explained that nurses and midwives are the major component of frontline healthcare and have played key roles.

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The NANNM president said: “In terms of security, our nurses face a lot of violence which ordinarily should not be. When there is an emergency, there is anxiety and I know that no nurse has ever hesitated to attend to any emergency. And in such periods, we notice that most people will put them under pressure in such a way that if not that nurses have been trained to be very stable and competent in their work, sometimes other things may happen. But they always stand their ground to make sure that nothing happens.”

Also, the General Secretary of NANNM, Shettima Thomas Ahmed, said it is important to see the role of the frontline healthcare workers and the strategic position they occupy in the health sector.

He lamented that equipment to enable the nurses to carry out their responsibilities are not available and those that are available are obsolete.

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