ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Doctors and nurses, dressed from head to toe in protective gear, stand around the patient fighting to keep the coronavirus-stricken man alive.
Just behind them, unnoticed and unheard of, a worker in the same protective gear is doing an entirely different task: disinfecting surfaces, collecting waste in biohazard bags, crawling unobtrusively past beds and life-sustaining machines to mop the floor.
The cleaners of coronavirus intensive care units run through infection risks on a daily basis to ensure ICUs run smoothly, and they are critical in preventing the spread of disease in hospitals. But their status as unskilled workers in a behind-the-scenes role has left them out of the public eye.
While medical personnel are praised worldwide for their lifesaving work during the pandemic, cleaners are rarely mentioned.
They feel like “the smallest cog in the wheel, as if no one is watching us,” someone said shortly before starting the painstaking process of putting on protective gear to enter an ICU at Sotiria Thoracic Diseases Hospital in Athens, the main COVID-19 treatment center in Greece.
She and her colleagues said they are well treated by the medical staff, and praised the team spirit within the hospital. The first wave of coronavirus vaccinations also included cleaners along with medical staff. But outside the hospital gates, she said, the prevailing attitude towards cleaners is, “I haven’t seen you, I don’t know you.”
Some people’s disdain for cleaners is so great that the 50-year-old mother of two wanted to be identified only by her initials AB, as some family members are unaware of her job.
“They’ll feel a little less like the fact that I’m a cleaning lady,” she said. Some family members have also been said to question the risk of working on a COVID-19 ICU and the danger of transmitting the virus to her family, so she has avoided telling them what she does for a living.
Georgia Tsiolou, who, like AB, started working in Sotiria in January 2020, a few months before the pandemic hit Greece, said authorities often talk about hiring more medical staff and offering bonuses and long-term contracts for nurses and doctors. But “for us there is nothing.”
Since they all have annual contracts, the cleaners don’t know if they will have a job after December.
“People only talk about doctors and nurses. It is, of course, good that they talk about the doctors and the nurses, because they are the ones who are fighting the biggest fight ”against the pandemic, said colleague Anna Athanassiou, 55.“ But with them we are here. We may not know how to heal someone, but we help a lot in our way, with our work. We are a chain. I think our work is absolutely necessary. “
Medical experts agree and stress the importance of cleaning.
“I cannot separate it from medical work or nursing. It’s equally important, ”said Antonia Koutsoukou, professor of intensive care pneumonology, citing infection control, a major problem in hospitals and especially in ICUs. Koutsoukou is the director of the Respiratory Disease Clinic at the University of Athens in Sotiria.
At the start of the pandemic, infectious disease experts at the hospital trained cleaners in the use of protective clothing. Now the experienced cleaners are teaching new recruits.
For the ICU’s newest cleaner, Theodoros Grivakos, it was a struggle to carry the equipment. It includes a mask, goggles and visor, a hooded suit, double gloves glued to the wrists, and plastic coverings glued over the feet.
“I was a bit shocked,” admitted the 28-year-old halfway through his first ICU shift. ‘I was getting dressed. I was dizzy. I felt pressure. I did not feel well. “
Grivakos, a graduate in electrical engineering, took the cleaning job when he couldn’t find a job in his chosen field. After he was initially assigned to the hospital’s park-like outdoor spaces, the sudden switch to the ICU came as a shock.
Working in an ICU, “an environment of increased stress and emotional pressure,” is unlike any other job, Koutsoukou said.
Cleaners work closely with patients who could die suddenly, she said. “So they are also called upon to arm themselves with a lot of emotional strength and calm, and to understand the importance of their own role in the care of the seriously ill.”
Some cleaners said they were unprepared for the psychological toll of the job, especially as the isolation of COVID-19 patients, unable to receive visitors, often led them to forge links with hospital staff, including cleaners.
‘It’s very emotional when you’re in there. It’s difficult, ‘said Tsiolou.
The start of the pandemic was particularly tough. Faced with a new virus that doctors knew little about, the cleaners were terrified of getting sick or taking the virus home. Many stayed away from their families or kept contact to an absolute minimum.
For some, the anxiety and stress turned out to be too much.
“There were a lot of people who were called to work, and they didn’t want to come because they were scared,” Tsiolou said. Many of her colleagues quit, leaving cleaners short of staff.
Those who have stayed despite the risks say they hope for some recognition of their critical role.
“People always think our industry is inferior,” said Athanassiou, who said she was saddened by the public’s indifference. But the medical staff, she said, understood.
“They know we’re the same too,” she said. “We are in exactly the same danger, we are no different.”
Grivakos compared attitudes to cleaners to the ancient Greek treatment of helots, a subdued population of Sparta.
“They don’t talk about the (cleaning) staff because (we) are helots,” he said. “(We) are expendable because one year you may be here and you may not be here the next.”