From the Sydney Morning Herald.
The chances of an elderly resident contracting COVID-19 in an aged care home decreases substantially for every registered nurse employed, with even an additional 20 minutes a day per resident cutting deaths and cases by more than 20 per cent.
A range of international studies, including one this week by the American Medical Association, revealed higher rates of COVID-19 in for-profit aged care homes and those with fewer nurses, backing up a trend in Victoria where private facilities have experienced 40 times more cases than public homes.
On Wednesday, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said government-run nursing homes, which have about 5400 beds, had six cases of COVID-19, a rate of about 0.1 per cent.0.1 per cent public versus 4 per cent private. That's 40 times higher in private, for-profit nursing homes.
In contrast, there had been 1923 cases in non-government homes with 44,600 beds, a rate of 4 per cent.
In Canada, where more than 80 per cent of COVID cases were in aged care facilities, a study looking at the impact of private ownership of aged care homes said policy should be directed at funding, mandating and enforcing sufficient staffing levels. This should also accommodate the added time or safety-related tasks such as meticulous handwashing, and careful donning and doffing of personal protective equipment.What our governments have allowed to happen cost lives and no one paid for it. What happened was as predictable as it was inexcusable. If the private care operators were negligent, government regulators were looking the other way. And it's been going on for decades - a half century at least. I know. I reported on this in the 1970s.
Letting the private sector run nursing homes and seniors residences has never been good. The profit imperative of capitalism will always take precedence over residents' quality of life, dignity and life itself.
ReplyDeleteCap
" . . . and no one paid for it."
ReplyDeleteThat seems to be the mantra theses days. When there is a loud enough public scream some poor schmuck gets selected to pay for it but the high paid execs who make the critical decisions rarely do.
My sense of this is that politicians, regardless of party, know this is one of those issues in which controversy flares dramatically but quickly fizzles out as we get back on with our daily lives.
ReplyDeleteI have been astonished at the climate science that comes out, is splashed all over the news for a day or two, and is flushed straight down the Memory Hole before the week is out. There's a real danger in this. Our instinct to turn away ensures that we will almost never connect the dots to grasp the significance of all this information. There is a mosaic that lies right beneath our feet that we do not see. If we did I don't know how we would react, what impact, if any, it would have on our political leadership.
If we don't wannna know neither will our political caste.