Cristiane and Raimundo Lamarão surrounded by their children.
Both nurses, he died from complications caused by covid-19. PERSONAL ARCHIVE / Pessoal collection
Nurse Cristiane Garcia Ferreira Lamarão, 43, remembers one of the days of coming home after an exhausting shift at the Porto Velho hospital, in northern Brazil.
“We had done three, sometimes four intubations of COVID-19 patients per shift.
It ended up exhausted, ”he says.
Before changing clothes and a long shower - "half an hour to clean herself well and reduce the chances of infecting staff at home" - her four-year-old son ran down the hall to hug her.
"I thought 'what now?'
Suddenly my husband came out of nowhere and held the little boy at the last minute.
He hugged him and said: 'We have to wait for mom to clean up.
Raimundo Socorro Lopes Lamarão, 51, also a nurse, knew the dangers of the disease he was trying to fight.
The couple even met in a hospital: "At first he was my supervisor," Cristiane recalls by phone this week.
He passed away in August.
Of the 200,000 deaths from covid-19 registered by the Ministry of Health in Brazil until last Thursday, 500 are from health personnel who were fighting on the front line against the disease.
It is the total of nurses, technicians, nursing assistants and obstetricians who died in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the new coronavirus, 30 of them only in January of this year, according to data from the Federal Council of Nursing.
Raimundo was hospitalized in early August and died 10 days later.
He left five children.
Cristiane also contracted the disease, but had milder symptoms.
“No one has been well since the beginning of the pandemic.
It was an imminent feeling of being with the covid all the time, ”he says.
She remembers the day her husband, already weakened by the disease, but unable to be admitted to any hospital, asked her: "Get me out of here, I don't want to die at home."
Cristiane continues to work as a nurse, but no longer in wards for coronavirus patients.
“I can't go in there anymore.
I feel very bad".
Brazil is responsible for a third of COVID-19 deaths among healthcare professionals around the world.
An alarming fact given that, without them, saving lives in hospitals every day becomes an almost impossible task.
More than 1,500 had died in 44 countries, according to the latest tally by the International Council of Nursing, released in November.
"That the number of nurses killed in the pandemic is similar to that of those who died in World War I is shocking," said Howard Catton, executive director of the organization, who drew a parallel between the current health crisis and one of the most violent conflicts of humanity.
The impact of the disease on professionals has gone through different stages in Brazil.
“During the acute phase of the pandemic, the lack of personal protective equipment put health workers at great risk.
And when these PPE arrived, they were often poor quality and ineffective materials, which they did not protect, ”explains Eduardo Fernando de Souza, 45, coordinator of the Covid-19 Crisis Management Committee of the Federal Council of Nursing and an emergency nurse with 25 years of experience.
In that period, many died due to the lack of a strict protocol on how to act in hospitals with covid-19 patients.
"There was a lot of contamination from the professionals at the time of the removal of the PPE, since it was not customary to use all this equipment, such as the hat, the face shield, the apron and the N-95 mask," he explains.
Now the infections and deaths of these professionals can be attributed to other factors.
Exhaustion is one of them.
There is no zero risk when it comes to infected patients, and the more tired the toilets are - many have been working non-stop since March - the greater the chances of an oversight.
In 2020, 44,441 nurses, technicians and assistants were removed from work and quarantined after being infected with the new coronavirus, a significant number within a universe of just over two million workers in the area.
With the population ignoring basic social distancing and prevention measures, hospitals were filling up again late last year.
“The more patients from covid there are in hospitals, the greater the risk for the health professional.
It is not otherwise ”, clarifies Souza.
Deaths and sick leave among workers have fueled the job market in this area, with a dangerous side effect for professionals.
“A lot of new people have been hired, there is a great demand for nursing staff,” explains Souza.
However, the new hires do not have the experience of the veterans who have been on the front line since March, which poses additional risks for them as they are not used to all the necessary self-care procedures and measures.
When asked if 2020 was the deadliest year for Brazilian nursing, Souza reflects. "What scares us today is that we are in the seventh day of 2021 and we have already had 30 new deaths, and that is going to increase," he said this Thursday. According to him, the incorporation of the mayors who took office throughout Brazil on January 1, with the arrival of new municipal health officials and other replacements, may cause problems in prevention and surveillance measures in addition to the ever-present fear that some politicians try to "minimize" the number of deaths of their employees. Finally, the nurse affirms: “Look, 2020 was bad, we cannot deny that. But if there is no awareness on the part of the population, managers and health professionals, the year 2021 will be even worse for Brazilian nursing ”.