JANUARY 17 — As the Health DG has said, our healthcare system is at the breaking point.

Let me point it out, it is way past beyond that. Any healthcare worker in this country knows that even before the Covid-19 pandemic  started our medical system was already at breaking point with the budget cuts, lack of manpower, overcrowding, and also lack of updated information on the state of disrepair in facilities (exhibit A: multiple fire accident at the same hospital in Johor , and yet nothing is told to the public).

The healthcare workers have a new synonym for the hospital where I am working along with frontliners in the battle against the ravages of this pandemic. But it is getting ridiculous as my hospital (Hospital Sungai Buloh) is also known as the Covid Hospital of Malaysia.

Since all this started, we have been exposed to the high infectious environment and dealing with unknown minuscule war creature. In Malaysia, two per cent of infected cases were healthcare workers.

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I am a doctor working at this hospital, and I can say that the basic amenities that are supposed to be given for us are not provided. Sometimes we do on-call shift duty every other day (EOD) in dealing and managing Covid patients and continue working after on-call until 5pm.

I understand that it is our job and I am grateful about it. They are supposed to provide us the on-call rooms, provide us on-call food, provide us a proper place to at least take a break and even rest before continuing facing this battle but all this have been taken away or was told not available at the moment.

They said there’s been a hospital budget cut so cannot provide on-call foods to on-call doctors.

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Do you know how exhausted and tiring are our calls plus wearing PPE in the midst of all this? And yet when we want to take a break there is no proper place to rest and worst of all, we can’t even have a proper meal.

We have already brought up these issues to higher authority (even Hospital Pengarah) but I guess our issues have fallen on the deaf ears.

Some of the senior doctors even said that unprecedented time calls for unprecedented actions and said we are pampered. (Well, during Your Time you did not have a pandemic to deal with!)

Most of the doctors are annoyed. Some of my colleagues fell into depression and started taking anti-depressant medications. Some of us didn’t even meet or visit our own families or loved ones for months.

WE ARE TIRED, EXHAUSTED, ANNOYED AND IT HAS GONE WAY PAST THE BREAKING POINT.

Moreover, we miss our family dearly and is this how you treat us?

With the new uprising in cases we expect the worst is yet to come. We do not want any recognition drawn as murals on walls or some praise spelt out as light show on a bridge.

Please provide us at least with a comfortable environment to carry out our duties and treat us like a human being facing long working hours.

Please would someone help us here.

 *This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.