Medical experts have warned that if mental strain among health care workers are not properly dealt with, it will cripple all efforts to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
They were speaking during an online launch of the Health Care Workers’ Network.
The network, an initiative of the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), provides psychological care to frontline workers in the medical profession.
Fifty-one-year-old Cape Town doctor, Dhinesh Singh, who became ill with COVID-19, says most medical workers are currently facing a mental meltdown.
“It comes as a great relief to me a week down the line that none of my close contacts had tested positive for COVID-19. What I also decided to do was to be very proactive by communicating with the hospitals, letting everybody know what my status was and what I was doing.”
“I was trying to de-stigmatise the illness and get on with it. My feeling is that many healthcare workers are going to test positive and get sick. If we can get the stigma issue out of the way, the denial issue out of the way, we can start acting sooner,” adds Singh.
The video below takes a look into mental health due to COVID-19
