A leading health expert has said it is not surprising that there is poor vaccine uptake by healthcare staff in Ireland.
Anthony Staines, a professor of health systems at the school of nursing at Dublin City University, said there was a long history of poor vaccine uptake among some groups of health staff, despite significant efforts by the HSE.
The issue was not confined to Ireland, he told RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne.
Briefing documents for the new HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster, drawn up in February, set out “ongoing threats” to public health including vaccine uptake levels among healthcare workers.
The briefing papers, released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act, say: “Poor vaccine uptake, particularly among health and care workers, has contributed to increased risk of both Covid-19 and influenza cases and outbreaks in settings with vulnerable people.”
They add that this also increased the “risk of high levels of absenteeism in these important services.”
The document does not set out statistics for vaccination uptake levels among workers.
Prof Staines warned that lower vaccination levels could lead to staff being exposed to infectious diseases, which in turn could have an impact on staff scheduling and make it difficult to provide services.
“It's a very serious problem and it's a problem affecting the HSE and in the United Kingdom also, and for not dissimilar reasons. Both are countries where the health services are relatively difficult to work in... The [World Health Organisation] reckons we will be 30 million nurses short by the end of this decade and maybe two million doctors short. So there is a global shortage.
“We don't train enough staff here. Most other countries don't train enough staff. So we import staff from all over the world.
The people we bring in are great, but there's always other places they can go and it is easier for them to work somewhere else. If they can get a better quality of life somewhere else a proportion of them will leave. They will go to greener pastures".
Accommodation
When asked about issues such as the availability of accommodation for healthcare staff, Prof Staines said housing could not be “fixed”, but the HSE could start trying to “fix things” that make it difficult for people to work in the health service.
“Stupid stuff like junior doctors going on emergency tax every six months. That should have been sorted out years ago. I remember them and I was a junior doctor in the 1980s. That was a significant problem and it's still a significant problem. That's crazy.”
Prof Staines also expressed concern about the decision to remove the mask mandate. “We've known for a long time that the priority is our vaccinations and boosters, followed by ventilation, air, hygiene generally, and then masking – masking makes a useful contribution to reducing the risk of transmission.
“I would wear a mask when I'm in crowded indoor space because I'm at fairly high risk anyway. But you really know when cases appear to arise in the community. We have 300 people in hospital with Covid.
“There is a new strain of Covid which has spread from the United States and India to Britain and is therefore likely to spread here. And it doesn't seem very different clinically from previous strains. It seems to be a lot more infectious. So now may not be the time to do it”.
