Viruses and Care
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- Published on Wednesday, 01 April 2020 10:14
- Written by editor
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2040 ... April 1, 2020
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Viruses and Care
Pat Armstrong
It is not surprising that the first recorded deaths from COVID-19 were in nursing homes. But the contributing factors cannot be attributed solely to age.
Long-term residential care shares with other healthcare organizations the negative impacts of neoliberal policies, namely cutbacks in government funding and a failure to keep up with demand for public services, managerial practices that create part-time jobs, contract work that eliminates benefits and irregular hours of work, the downloading of labour to those with the fewest formal credentials, the reduction of staff to a minimum, tight control over workers, and the privatization of ownership as well as the contracting out of work in non-profit and municipal homes. All of these policies and practices have an impact on the conditions of work that are the conditions of care.
However, they have a particular impact within the places most commonly called nursing homes, defined as those that provide 24-hour nursing care and services heavily subsidized by government to make them accessible based on need, not ability... to pay. The failure over the years to provide enough beds to meet the growing need means that the majority of those now in homes have been diagnosed with dementia as well as with a host of the chronic illnesses often combined with incontinence, making them especially vulnerable to any virus. At the same time, a significant number of the homes were built to accommodate the frail elderly, not those with heavy healthcare needs. As a result, there are still homes with rooms for four and a bathroom shared by all, dining rooms designed for close personal contact, and narrow halls that make distancing impossible, not to mention limited access to the outside and to easy ways to wash hands.
