What Is PPE? Can Our Healthcare System Improve?

By: Phuong Nguyen

July 28th, 2020

I will argue that the U.S healthcare system was unprepared for this pandemic, specifically, we are in shortage of PPE right now.

First, let’s talk about different points of view in the U.S during the pandemic. According to The Argument podcast, states, “The U.S is doing way better than some European countries. There are systems that bigger than Trump, like the health system or the way our government designs. The question is have we response and mobilize when we should have? Need to focus on treatment. The government will need to know what they need for the following month, but so far it’s nothing.“ Interestingly, some people would blame the leadership role at America for realizing the danger of COVID-19 too late. I personally think our healthcare system was unprepared by the way that we respond to our pandemic. 

To further strengthen my argument, a report by The Commonwealth Fund proved, “ On indicators of efficiency, the U.S. ranks last among the 11 countries, with the U.K. and Sweden ranking first and second, respectively. The U.S. has poor performance on measures of national health expenditures and administrative costs as well as on measures of administrative hassles, avoidable emergency room use, and duplicative medical testing.” This demonstrated that because we are underperforming when it comes to a pandemic, that’s why we are ranked last among 11 countries. 

Therefore, we do not fund our healthcare system enough so when we need to save people. We do not have enough space in the hospitals for the patients. We do not have enough medicine or supply that can save the patients’ life for a little more. Lastly, we do not have enough equipment to protect our citizens. 

To begin, what is the PPE? PPE stands for Personal Protection Equipment, for example, those can be represented as masks, gloves,… These are the necessary equipment to protect doctors and patients, especially doctors and nurses since they can’t do the social distance. However, this is our central problem. Lacking supply to protect people has allowed the COVID-19 to take lives. 

Besides, the CDC claimed that “The greatly increased need for PPE caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has caused PPE shortages, posing a tremendous challenge to the U.S. healthcare system. Healthcare facilities are having difficulty accessing the needed PPE and are having to identify alternative ways to provide patient care.” The healthcare facilities are having trouble requesting more PPE and they are unable to take care of their patients. This is why we have a lot of infectious cases and even deaths in America. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, July 16th, 2020).

Finally, the New York Times stated, “The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the stockpile, did not return emails requesting information about the supplies. The department has estimated that the country would need 3.5 billion masks in the event of a pandemic lasting a year.” This demonstrates that we are unprepared and it has led to the consequence of lacking supply during this emergency case. 3.5 billion masks are not an easy task to do, it requires time and lives do not wait. (The New York Times, March 19th, 2020).

In my opinion, it’s not too late to start funding our healthcare system by opening more space, creating more medicine, and adding more staff to save people. We should always have PPE in our store and it should be ready anytime. We should have more funding into our healthcare system, instead of pouring into the military.

Some people would ask me this question: how do you know if it works or not? I would say that:

As stated by Vice President Chen Chien-Jen in Taiwan, they have been prepared for this for 17 years. They have an epidemic prevention system since 2003. For example, they have prevented hospital infection by having specific doors for out and in patients. This helps to separate the infectious patients and normal people so they wouldn’t have swelling cases of COVID-19. They also have a specific machine to identify who has coronavirus, by having that they can notice right away and apply quarantine immediately for that person. 

How did Taiwan succeed at stopping this pandemic? The answer is PPE, the key to our healthcare system to be better at performing. Taiwan always has PPE in its system to help protect everyone and identify the source of the infection. We should start developing more PPE to strengthen our preparedness for the next pandemic. 

Work cited: Wu, T., Majeed, A., & Kuo, K. (2010, December). An overview of the healthcare system in Taiwan. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3960712/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2020. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). [online] Available at: <https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/index.html> [Accessed 18 July 2020].

Andrew Jacobs, Matt Richtel, and Mike Baker (March 19, 2020). ‘At War With No Ammo’: Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/health/coronavirus-masks-shortage.html

Opinion, T. (2020, April 29). ‎The Argument: When Science Is Partisan on Apple Podcasts. Retrieved July 24, 2020, from https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-argument/id1438024613?i=1000473098533

Hoover Institution (May 14th, 2020). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Ry6eiKvvw

https://ncifrederick.cancer.gov/about/theposter/content/new-ppe-policy-will-help-prevent-injuries