Professor at Kasturba Hospital, Sewagram Dr Indrajit Khandekar hasn’t worn the entire PPE kit while on duty for 15 days in Covid ward and has treated around 90 Covid patients. His colleagues wore complete personal protective equipment (PPE) and he only wore a N95 mask.
Wearing PPE makes me feel very uncomfortable, lowers my confidence and I can't do the job assigned to me properly so I don't wear PPE kit when examining corona patients, said Dr Khandekar.
That doesn’t mean I’m careless. I do not wear PPE because I also believe that many people get infected regularly with the viruses whenever there is change in weather. I get infected with such viruses 2-3 times a year and the symptoms like fever, cold, cough, loss of taste etc come more or less according to our immune system at that time. It's just that I don't keep such a virus in my head for 24/7. So, for me, corona is a germ, like earlier viruses that had killed millions in the past. Covid may have infected me and will continue to do so even in future.
PPE causes a lot of sweating after a while, the whole body gets wet, you can't even go to the bathroom so you drink less water. This has an adverse effect on the health of health workers as they stay in PPE for more than 6 hours. Also, all these things unknowingly lead to neglect of patients which increases the morbidity and mortality of covid patients due to medical errors.
