{"id":161683,"date":"2020-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.one.org\/us\/we-cant-forget-about-other-illnesses-during-covid\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T21:49:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:49:27","slug":"we-cant-forget-about-other-illnesses-during-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.one.org\/us\/stories\/we-cant-forget-about-other-illnesses-during-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"We can\u2019t forget about other illnesses during COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Martin Dedicoat is a consultant in infectious diseases at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. We interviewed him as part of our #PassTheMic campaign. Here\u2019s some of what he had to say.<\/em><\/p>\n

Learning from each other during this time is vital. A repository of information to show responses that have worked and those that haven\u2019t would be useful.<\/p>\n

For example, in Medellin, Colombia, they\u2019ve done something for people who come to hospital with symptoms of COVID, but are not ill enough to be admitted. They\u2019ve given people a little oxygen meter (which is not expensive) and sent them home. Then if the meter reading drops to a certain level, it triggers a response from their local ambulance service and takes oxygen to those people\u2019s houses.<\/p>\n

Where I\u2019m based in Birmingham, the second biggest city in England, we\u2019ve been hit quite hard by coronavirus. My hospital has had more patients and more deaths than South Africa \u2014 that\u2019s quite sobering, isn\u2019t it? South Africa\u2019s had about 1,000 deaths in total and Birmingham\u2019s had more than that.<\/p>\n

So every inch of the hospital became a COVID hospital. The striking thing was the sickness of the patients. We found that some patients looked quite well, but their lungs just weren\u2019t working. The amount of oxygen we can usually deliver on the ward is about 24% to 28%, but we had to deliver up to 98% oxygen to keep patients stable.<\/p>\n

A troubling rise in tuberculosis<\/h3>\n

One of my concerns is that \u201cnormal patients\u201d haven\u2019t started returning to the hospital yet, and I think there\u2019s a bit of fear around that. We\u2019ve got to work on dispelling that, because we can see people safely.<\/p>\n

My pre-COVID area of interest is tuberculosis (TB), and I\u2019m very worried about this. In the UK people who have got TB are going to be at home, coughing. They may have been told they\u2019ve got COVID, and if they sought telephone advice they\u2019ll just stay home, thinking they\u2019ll be better in a few weeks. With TB, you wouldn\u2019t get as ill as a COVID patient, so you wouldn\u2019t really need to come to hospital, and that\u2019s going to cause a lot of secondary spread. Probably, unfortunately, mostly among children, because they\u2019re with their parents at home.<\/p>\n

This is a big issue worldwide too. During this COVID period, it\u2019s been calculated that it will mean 1.4 million excess deaths from tuberculosis, and the TB programme has been knocked back three to five years. That\u2019s devastating because many countries have worked so incredibly hard on the World Health Organisation\u2019s \u201cEradicate TB by 2050.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think that goal might be impossible now. So, again, working to restart these services and make sure that they are fully funded is going to be massively important.<\/p>\n

However, people have worked well together in the UK to tackle COVID. They\u2019ve challenged their preconceptions of what they could and couldn\u2019t do. They found new ways of doing things.<\/p>\n

Prior to COVID I worked with the charity Virtual Doctors, where I answer cases posted by medical officers in Zambia. During COVID the cases haven\u2019t slowed down, so we\u2019ve been able to continue to help. We\u2019ve also been able to do a lot of work around COVID preparation.<\/p>\n

So I hope that after COVID, we won\u2019t go back into ourselves, but we\u2019ll continue to talk to people in different places and share experiences. I think that\u2019s a sign of hope.<\/p>\n

These excerpts from the interview were edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hear more from experts in our #PassTheMic campaign<\/a>, where global health experts take over celebrities\u2019 social media channels to share the data, facts, and science we need to know to end COVID-19. Follow us on Instagram<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, and Twitter<\/a> for more.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Learning from each other during this time is vital. A repository of information to show responses that have worked and those that haven\u2019t would be useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"165913,163589,163436,161624,161626,161628","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[514,41,47],"contributor":[519],"one_content_audience":[],"one_content_type":[],"one_content_tone":[],"class_list":["post-161683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","topic-passthemic","topic-covid-19","topic-health","contributor-dr-martin-dedicoat"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWe can\u2019t forget about other illnesses during COVID - 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