UAE-COVID19: A Story Of Bravery
Cancer patients receiving chemotherapy need to be vigilant to follow mask wearing procedures, hand cleaning, social distancing, and using hand sanitisers, as tests indicate that if they contract extreme COVID-19 due to poorer immunity, they are double at risk of mortality, doctors have warned.Consider the example of Mary J, a 39-year-old Filipino expatriate who has been living in the UAE for 11 years. On May 11, a unit manager at a famous amusement center in Abu Dhabi, Mary, a patient with breast cancer, was diagnosed with COVID-19 and has been undergoing chemotherapy at the NMC Specialist Hospital in Abu Dhabi since March 2019. The hospital has been very involved in training all COVID-19 preventive chemotherapy patients and Mary J, who has been a UAE resident for 11 years.
For all cancer patients receiving care at their oncology unit, it performs periodic COVID 19 testing once every two weeks and was thus able to learn that Mary was positive in time to handle her condition well. Explaining the elevated risk of COVID-19 in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, Dr Diab said: “The immune system is typically inhibited or damaged by cancer therapies such as chemotherapy , radiation therapy, surgery, stem cell or bone marrow transplantation, or by steroid treatment.” Most of these therapies decrease the amount of white blood cells in our body, which leaves the patient especially vulnerable to some form of infection because they lack the neutrophils called WBCs that kill germs.
The patient has or is said to have neutropenia with a reduced neutrophil count. He also explained how the white blood cells in the bone marrow along with the cancer cells are killed by chemotherapy. Our body has less neutrophils while the WBCs are killed, which makes cancer patients at high risk of infection, and exposure to COVID-19 must be avoided at all costs during these periods. Due to their weaker bodies and their poor capacity to digest nutrients from food, cancer patients are typically placed on special diets. They are claimed to be immuno-impaired and are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 positive checks.
The oncology center educates all patients on this probability and guides them about how they can stay free of COVID-19, Dr. Diab said. We have a separate oncology care building, but there is no improvement in the number of fever patients coming in. Both steps are taken, including the Oncology Department’s point of entry screening, mask entry only, hand grooming, social distance, and full PPE against viral infection by all medical personnel.
To observe sufficient psychological distancing, we should not take in more than eight patients at a time for chemotherapy. Many of their patients are checked for COVID-19 once every two weeks.’
