The UK government failed in its duty of care to protect doctors and the wider healthcare workforce at the start of the pandemic, a doctors’ union says.
The British Medical Association review said staff were desperately let down by the lack of protective equipment.
And they were still suffering the physical and mental health impacts, having seen levels of illness and death “they were never trained for”.
The BMA criticisms, based on feedback and testimonies from the union’s members, will form part of its submission to the official public inquiry into the pandemic.
Doctors told the BMA that, during the early months of the pandemic, there were times they had to buy or make their own masks.
Many doctors said they had felt pressured to work in hazardous situations, with inadequate risk assessments.
The BMA, which has been critical of the government’s response to the pandemic throughout, said the UK should have been better prepared and the problems had been made worse by the “savage” cuts to the public-health budget in the years before.
Will the much-delayed public enquiry expose the complete shambles which was the response of BJ and the Tories to COVID pandemic … 