No hugs: Italian Red Cross workers suffer from lack of human touch

Fri, Mar 27, 2020
By publisher
2 MIN READ

Foreign

RED Cross workers in Italy’s virus-hit Lombardy region are extremely anguished, but they cannot get or give comfort because of strict hygienic precautions, Red Cross chief Francesco Rocca says.

“Health workers are dealing with something unprecedented,’’ the president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said on Friday from Milan, in a briefing for Geneva-based media.

The previous day, Rocca met a volunteer who had just experienced a shattering personal loss.

“She said, ‘You know what, Francesco, I lost my mother this morning,’’ Rocca said, taking a deep breath.

“And I couldn’t hug her. She was crying in front of me, two meters away from me.’’

Ambulance teams who are picking up coronavirus patients from their homes are experiencing how their relatives cannot bid them farewell.

Wearing protective overalls, the paramedics also cannot approach the grieving relatives to comfort them.

Some families even opt against sending patients who are ill with Covid-19 to hospital for this reason, according to Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo in Italy’s northern Lombardy region.

“In some cases, the families themselves prefer  them to stay home because they are afraid that they will not be able to say goodbye to their loved ones,’’ he told foreign journalists .

“The terrible thing of this is the lack of physical human touch,’’ said Rocca, who also heads the Italian Red Cross.

While a psychological help line for Italian volunteers has been set up, the general public should also get psychosocial support, he said. `It’s terribly needed,’’ Rocca said.

The risk of suicide is increasing among people during the lockdown, while drug addicts are turning to alcohol, he warned.

In addition, economically marginalised people are finding themselves without income. “This is social bomb that can explode any moment,’’ he warned. (dpa/NAN)

– Mar. 27, 2020 @ 18:09 GMT |

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