‘They’re my only link to the outside world’: Caregivers hailed as heroes amid pandemic
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France’s caregivers are being hailed as heroes among the frontliners fighting against COVID-19 for over two months, whose courage and efforts have helped to save many lives.
Cécile Aime has been providing care to handicapped and the elderly patients during the pandemic.
“I am not afraid of getting sick (with COVID-19),” Cécile told Euronews. “My biggest fear is to be sick and not present symptoms and to contaminate someone for whom this could be way more serious.”
Many care givers are worried that they might be carriers of the virus even if they do not show any symptoms, and this might be dangerous for their patients. This is why Cécile has taken a number of precautionary measures – changing masks with every client, not getting too close, while all the time wearing gloves and a gown. She also avoids shopping in order to limit the number of people she comes in contact with on a daily basis.
Cécile works for Oui Care, France’s leading provider of personal and household services with 18,000 employees, and they have had to adapt their operations when the first COVID-19 cases started appearing among beneficiaries. The care team was split into two teams in order to tru and avoid cross contamination, those who only tended to patients tested positive for coronavirus, and teams who only worked with “healthy” clients.
“Because we accompany the elderly and the handicapped, during this COVID-19 crisis we must continue these actions because these people need us in their daily lives. They need us to help them get out of bed, wash, get dressed, eat… and so we must continue to intervene,” Guillaume Richard, the company’s CEO, told Euronews.
However the company’s first concern was the wellbeing and safety of its employees, which is why they have been pushing for personal protective equipment (PPE), with the authorities in order to continue offering their service.
Many caregivers who have been taking care of the elderly and people with disabilities have lost their life during this pandemic, which has claimed the lives of nearly 250,000 people globally. These “invisible” workers have proven to be essential pillars of society during the crisis. The question now is whether their efforts will continue to be valued once the pandemic is over.
