The first eighteen months of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the true cost of neglecting health worker safety: an estimated 115,500 health and care workers died from the disease globally. This staggering figure represents not merely a tragedy, but a systemic failure in occupational protection.
The data extends beyond mortality. More than one in three health facilities worldwide lacked basic hand-hygiene stations at the point of care—a fundamental infection control measure. Fewer than one in six countries had national policies establishing safe and healthy working environments in the health sector. These statistics illustrate how casually the international community had treated health worker safety.
Georgia cannot ignore these lessons. The pandemic did not create occupational hazards in healthcare; it simply made their consequences impossible to overlook. Building robust surveillance and prevention systems now is both an ethical imperative and a clinical necessity.
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