[imagesource: Axel Heimken / Pool via AFP]

Last weekend, South Africans forwarded a voicenote around on WhatsApp at a rate of knots, purporting to be from Dr Diana Hardie, a top expert at Groote Schuur Hospital.

It later emerged that the voicenote was actually a message from a concerned young doctor, sent to her mother, that was not meant to be shared.

To summarise, voicenote – genuine. Added information about it being from Dr Diana Hardie, a top expert at Groote Schuur Hospital – fake news.

During that nearly 16-minute long voicenote, the young doctor warned her mother about how doctors might be forced to make decisions about who gets to live and who has to die.

Around the world, especially in hard-hit areas like northern Italy, that has already been a reality, and now Sky News reports that it may soon happen in the UK:

Health workers could be forced to make “grave decisions” should hospitals become overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, the latest advice from the British Medical Association (BMA) states.

The document warns that decisions around rationing scarce resources, such as ventilators, could determine whether large numbers of patients will receive life-saving treatment or not…

According to the new BMA guidance, doctors will face decisions “which mean some patients may be denied intensive forms of treatment that they would have received outside a pandemic”.

“Health professionals may be obliged to withdraw treatment from some patients to enable treatment of other patients with a higher survival probability,” the document states.

Here’s the bit that hits home the hardest, and points to a massive failure on the part of someone like Boris Johnson to act soon enough

Yes, the same Boris who proudly stated that he was shaking hands with coronavirus victims, only to later become infected.

“This may involve withdrawing treatment from an individual who is stable or even improving but whose objective assessment indicates a worse prognosis than another patient who requires the same resource.”

The BMA’s guidance says that during the peak of the pandemic doctors may have to assess a person’s eligibility for treatment based on a “capacity to benefit quickly” basis.

Let that sink in for a second. Even patients who are improving could have treatment withdrawn, in order for someone else with a better chance of surviving to get help.

Doctors and healthcare workers should not have to make these decisions.

A guiding principle from the BMA, for doctors to follow during the pandemic, states that “everyone matters and everyone matters equally, but this does not mean that everyone will be treated the same”.

That’s some Animal Farm speak right there.

Dr John Chisholm, chairman of the BMA’s medical ethics committee, says that he is well aware that these decisions will cause “anger and pain”, but are a necessary evil:

“People who, in normal circumstances, would receive strenuous treatment may instead be given palliation in order to favour those with greater likelihood of benefiting.

“Nobody wants to make these decisions, but if resources are overwhelmed, these decisions must be made.”

Yes, they will have to be made, but this must also be seen as a failure of epic proportions that leaders like Boris Johnson are forced to confront as long as they live.

As of yesterday, reports the BBC, the NHS has around 8 175 ventilators, and the government believes up to 30 000 ventilators could be needed at the peak of the pandemic, expected later this month.

Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said the NHS will be sent 30 new ventilators next week and promised “hundreds” more would follow.

Sadly, to prevent doctors from being forced to decide who lives and who dies, that won’t be enough.

[source:skynews]