🌎 In Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia, more than 1 in 10 doctors, nurses and community health workers experienced symptoms of severe depression.
🌎 In Chile, more than one third of all health workers experienced a depressive episode, and nearly 15% of the medical workforce had thoughts of suicide.
🌎 According to the collaborative HEROES study in 11 Latin American countries, health workers showed elevated rates of depressive symptoms, suicidal thinking, and psychological distress.
The pandemic revealed a deficit in the availability of health workers 👩🏽⚕️👨🏾⚕️, uneven distribution of health workers across our countries, and inadequate training.
Years of underinvestment in our health services 🏥, aging information systems and poor labor conditions made our health workers’ job even more challenging.
Even before the pandemic, the health workforce in the Americas 🌎 faced serious disadvantages that were only exacerbated by COVID.
When we look closer, one trend stands out: countries with higher ⬆️ vaccination coverage are seeing lower ICU admissions and deaths.
This emphasizes the importance of expanding access to vaccines – including boosters 🩹, where available – to save lives.
Deaths, on the other hand, increased by 13% overall, with higher increases in parts of Central and South America.
Last week, we saw more than 4.8 million new cases 🦠 and over 33,000 new deaths in our region.
While still very high, new infections and hospitalizations are beginning to go down in some countries in our region 🌎
Cases decreased by 31% compared with the previous week.
🚨LIVE 🔊PAHO Press Briefing on #COVID19🦠in the Americas 🌎 February 9, 2022😷 twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
