Unmasked: Stories from the PPE frontline

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Personal protective equipment like masks and gloves are the last line of defence for healthcare workers on the frontline, preventing them from getting infected by the Covid patients they care for. But how protected are the factory workers who make these products? Phil Kemp investigates claims that exhausted migrant workers in Malaysia have worked up to 12 hours a day, 29 days a month to produce the gloves so desperately needed in hospitals around the world, with some exposed to outbreaks themselves at work.

Reporter: Phil Kemp Producer: Anna Meisel (Image: A worker inspects newly-made gloves. Credit: Reuters/Lim Huey Teng)

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right. I've just gotten up and I've looked at the news today. It says that 1,800 plus people have lost their lives to COVID according to national figures.
0:21.0	Gosh, so difficult and so sad.
0:25.0	It's late January and Dr. Pushpo Babble-Husanes working as a junior doctor in a London hospital
0:32.0	on the COVID wards. She's an international
0:36.2	medical graduate from Bangladesh, but it's not just doctors from overseas, the UK's National
0:41.9	Health Service or NHS relies on to keep going.
0:46.1	As we join Pushpo on her night shift, we're going to hear how vitally important the
0:51.5	masks, gowns and gloves it in ports are for keeping her safe.
0:57.0	You're listening to assignment on the BBC World Service with me Phil Kemp. We have multi-layered p.
1:07.0	Just have the coat or the top.
1:12.0	It comes in a plastic package, just remove the package right now.
1:17.0	Dr. Hussein's PPE routine is quite a bit more involved than the one much of the world has become used to,
1:24.3	wearing a mask to go shopping. She agreed to record her experience for us
1:29.3	in her capacity as a member of the campaign group, the Doctors Association UK.
1:34.0	So I shall take you with me on my PPE journey today.
1:39.0	Okay, so now we're going to enter into the red zone.
1:47.0	Our masks are designed to stop us passing on the virus to other people.
1:52.0	Dr Hussain's PPE is designed to protect her from getting
1:56.6	infected. There were severe shortages of kit in the UK's National Health Service in the early months of the pandemic.
2:05.0	That wasn't a problem where Pushpo works, but...
2:09.0	I caught COVID in the first wave and I followed all the COVID
2:16.6	guidelines. You know all the PPP that I had couldn't stop me from getting COVID.
	...

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