About 4 million Healthcare workers have been infected with COVID-19 worldwide

So far in the pandemic of COVID-19, at least 4 million health care workers worldwide were infected with coronavirus. This was confirmed this Friday to World Health Organization (WHO), after indicating that 90% of the countries continue to suffer disturbances in their health services.

The director of the WHO Health Workforce department, Jim Campbell, gave this figure at a press conference after presenting the results of the second survey conducted by the agency to measure how the pandemic has affected health services around the world, with data from 135 countries and territories.

The survey shows that the percentage of countries affected in their health services remains the same with respect to the previous survey carried out by the WHO, in the summer of 2020, although the level of disturbance has decreased: if before half of the services were affected , the percentage has now been reduced to one third.

Among the most affected services are those for the treatment of mental and neurological diseases, tuberculosis, HIV / AIDS, hepatitis, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, or family planning, the experts said when presenting the report.

Disturbances in services “They particularly affect low- and middle-income countries, and among the regions that have reported the greatest disturbances are Africa and the Americas.”, Said the head of Coordination of Health Systems of the WHO, Patrick Zuber.

A third of the surveyed countries also reported persistent supply problems for certain essential items such as medicines, diagnostic tests or protective equipment.

More than half of the health networks indicated that the disruptions in their services were largely due to the fact that many patients stopped visiting for fear of catching COVID-19.

The greatest impact of the pandemic on health services, in fact, occurred in primary care, although the survey also shows problems in the networks of care for chronic patients, rehabilitation or care for the terminally ill, among others.

Finally, more than a third of the countries admitted having been affected in their vaccination programs for different diseases.