Petition: A Call for the Universal Use of Respirators in Healthcare (deadline October 31st)

Kalliope

Kalliope

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I belive there are several members here who'd like to add their name in support of this letter from scientists and professionals to WHO urging universal use of respirators in healthcare. Everyone who supports this can sign, you don't have to be a professional to add your name.

Description

In an effort to advance global public health through turbulent times, a group of experts from around the globe in medicine, public health, law, industrial hygiene, and other disciplines, met at the Unpolitics Summer 2025 Conference and came together to write a letter out of deep concern — and with sincere hope for change — to the World Health Organization to urge them to change their historical and ongoing position failing to advocate for the use of respirators in healthcare settings.


In the letter, (you can read the letter here) we urge WHO to recommend true respirator use (N95/FFP2-3) in all healthcare settings, rather than ineffective surgical masks (or nothing at all). We think this will save tens of thousands of lives as SARS-CoV-2 continues to circulate and mutate. In the longer term, this is an overdue attempt to change the culture of respiratory protection for healthcare workers and their patients, as surgical masks provide little if any reduction in airborne exposures to infectious aerosols.

If you would like to add your name to the letter before it is sent to the WHO, please submit your information below before Friday, October 31st, 2025. Thank you!


docs.google.com

A Call for the Universal Use of Respirators in Healthcare - Add Your Name

In an effort to advance global public health through turbulent times, a group of experts from around the globe in medicine, public health, law, industrial hygiene, and other disciplines, met at the Unpolitics Summer 2025 Conference and came together to write a letter out of deep concern — and...
docs.google.com docs.google.com
 
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Yann04 said:
Would it help or hurt this if I sign it without any credentials. (Seems like an Open Letter more than a petition).
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It would help. They are now asking for anyone and as many as possible to sign.

Sorry if petition was a wrong word. I thought of it as a petition for support of the letter.

ETA: I see how it could be misunderstood and have edited the first post to make it clearer.
 
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Isn't there also a downside to using respirators? I don't know how much one of those respirators will interfere with vision, concentration, etc, but certainly wouldn't want my surgeon to be doing serious work on me while wearing a WWII-style gasmask. I'm sure the new ones are much less handicapping, but probably still more than a surgical mask.

How many patients have died due to infections that would have been prevented by respirators, vs ones that died due to errors made due to the handicaps caused by respirators?
 
Creekside said:
Isn't there also a downside to using respirators? I don't know how much one of those respirators will interfere with vision, concentration, etc, but certainly wouldn't want my surgeon to be doing serious work on me while wearing a WWII-style gasmask. I'm sure the new ones are much less handicapping, but probably still more than a surgical mask.

How many patients have died due to infections that would have been prevented by respirators, vs ones that died due to errors made due to the handicaps caused by respirators?
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Ordinary N95 masks seem to be called 'respirators', which confused me because I initially thought of a respirator as essentially a gas-mask. Here's a photo.
 
The N95 does cause difficulty breathing, so that might interfere with concentrating on surgery.

"It is important to recognize that the optimal way to prevent transmission of microorganisms, such as viruses, is to use a combination of interventions from across the hierarchy of controls, not just PPE alone."

Add to that the variety of circumstances. Some patients are at greater risk from a viral infection than others. If a dangerous virus is common at a place and time, then extra measures are required. If the patient has a robust immune system and there's no dangerous virus going around at that time, why impair the doctors unnecessarily?

I disagree with a blanket regulation on masking. Hospitals are supposed to apply appropriate measures to prevent harmful infections, so let them decide what is appropriate in their specific situation. They have a better understanding of the risks and benefits of specific types of masks than a bunch of random people who are simply told "You might die of surgery if your surgical team isn't wearing the latest super-duper respirator!!!!" and asked to sign a petition.
 
Creekside said:
If the patient has a robust immune system and there's no dangerous virus going around at that time, why impair the doctors unnecessarily?
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Because a seemigly mild infection can be the difference between a life of health or severe disability.
Plus hospitals tend to be a place for an abundance of vulnerable people so it’s the number one place transmission should be kept to 0.
 
Yann04 said:
Because a seemigly mild infection can be the difference between a life of health or severe disability.
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It's a matter of numbers. You probably can't reduce it to 0.00000%. Also, the countermeasures, whether it's respirators or intense UV illumination or whatever, likely has a non-zero chance of harm. The countermeasures also have a dollar cost, which means less money available for other important purposes. You could probably spend the health care system's entire budget lowering the chance of an unwanted infection from 1/10000 to 1/1000000--which is still non-zero. Requiring expensive masks in situations where there's little chance of spreading an infection means less money available for better countermeasures in situations where there's a much greater chance.

For all I know, the fancy respirators would only prevent a small percentage of patient infections, which are caused by other methods of transmission (opening a door).

I wonder whether a small static charge on a mask, perhaps with an opposite charge on the clothing beneath the face, would reduce microdroplet transfer to the patient. Oooh, or a similar charge on the patient, to repel the microdroplets. Darn, now I can't patent that!
 
Creekside said:
Hospitals are supposed to apply appropriate measures to prevent harmful infections, so let them decide what is appropriate in their specific situation. They have a better understanding of the risks and benefits of specific types of masks than a bunch of random people who are simply told "You might die of surgery if your surgical team isn't wearing the latest super-duper respirator!!!!" and asked to sign a petition.
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I'm not a super strong proponent of masking and think that there are other things that need to be done like good ventilation systems. And I acknowledge that there are tradeoffs between the cost of PPI and the provision of other health promoting goods and services, especially in highly resource constrained facilities, but

1. No one is proposing saying 'you might die if your surgical team isn't wearing the latest super-duper respirator'. The N95 isn't high tech. The message from staff might be 'we wear these to protect ourselves and to protect vulnerable people in our care'.

2. Hospital administrators often aren't very good at weighing the risks or training staff.

Here's an anecdote from when I took my delirious elderly relative to hospital, and supported her for two weeks there a couple of months ago. This is a hospital in the main city of a first world country. In the emergency department, we scarcely saw a nurse in the many hours we were there. I helped my relative with toileting as she had a bladder infection. I didn't use gloves. The toilet was not cleaned in the time we were using it. Bedding was soaked in urine. The orderly who changed the bedding did not wear an apron.

The next day, my relative was transferred to an assessment unit. This is essentially an extension of the emergency department which enables the hospital to claim adequate ED clearance rates despite the wards being full. The assessment unit is completely inadequately resourced. People were stacked up in the corridors. Many people were coughing.

I noticed a sign on the curtain around my relative's bed, telling staff to take extra care with hygiene, I.e wear a gown or apron, wear gloves and wash hands. It took me two hours of asking why the sign was there to get an answer; no one wanted to tell me.

Eventually, I was told that my relative had been found, on a previous hospitalisation, to have an antibiotic resistant bacteria in her gut - probably acquired during that hospital stay. Given her symptoms, it was quite likely that the bacteria could be transmitted in urine. When I mentioned this to the doctor and said that staff were often not following the precautions and that I hadn't been, he said 'it's no big deal, we probably all have the bacteria and we are fine'.

A man in the bed next to my relative was constantly coughing and didn't seem to be mentally well, he kept on calling out for his mother. Few staff wore masks. Some doctors came to the man in the bed across from my relative, drawing the curtains around him to tell him loudly that he had stage 4 cancer. All of those patients were using the same toilet, which was often soiled.

In the following two weeks I noted that sometimes the hygiene alert sign would be on my relative's bed and sometimes it wasn't. When she got to a ward she initially had a one bed room with the hygiene alert sign on the door. When we left the room to take my relative to a toilet, we were told off and instructed to return to the room. A little while later that same day, my relative was moved to a group ward with no sign on the curtain and no restrictions on movement, so that an elderly patient who looked very unwell indeed could be moved into the single bed room. When I asked about the absence of the hygiene alert sign, I was told the 'situation had been de-escalated'. The sign was back another day.

I would take my relative to a toilet used by people from multiple wards and, because she had been given a laxative, the cubicle would end up soiled. Once I alerted a nurse and yet hours later the cubicle was still soiled. I asked a cleaner what she knew about the hygiene alert sign and she looked confused and said that she thought it was 'something to do with poo' (when actually urine can spread the bacteria). People dealing with soiled bedding and clothing routinely did not wear aprons. No one gave me any instruction in hygiene management or self-protection even though, due to staff shortages I was helping my relative a lot.

It looks to me as though hospitals are a major vector of antibiotic resistant bacteria, creating a problem for future health care that is difficult to overstate in its magnitude.

I could go on and of course that is an example of a contact contamination issue, not an aerosol, but hopefully you can see @Creekside, that actual practice in terms of staff making good decisions about infection control and there being good communication with everyone who needs information can easily be a long way short of ideal. Staff in the front line are likely to downplay risks and administrators tend to want to save money.

The only time another relative has had Covid-19 was when he acquired it in hospital while recovering from brain surgery (he also subsequently developed scabies).

Anyone who thinks current practice in infection control is fine and hospital administrators with discretion can be relied on to make good decisions about when masking should happen should go sit in an ED or a busy ward for a day.
 
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I think the letter is very good. It notes that objections such as the idea that these more effective masks have significant problems with breathability e.g. CO2 buildup are unfounded.
 
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