Dear patients,
Since January, the Diaverum medical and nursing teams have been working daily to create protocols on how to modify routines and monitor dialysis patients during the COVID-19 outbreak.
We put into practice stringent protocols to minimize the risk of contagion, allow for quick diagnosis and manage the correct referral of cases. We regularly update them and thus we ensure that our activity is done according to the most rigorous scientific and epidemiological criteria to minimize the spread of this disease.
By now, your team should have provided you with all the information you needed to continue your treatments safely. Naturally, it was necessary for you to participate in the change of daily activities in the treatment clinic and we thank you for your cooperation, but this allowed us to ensure the safely continuity of operations in a particularly difficult time.
During this period, there were lot of changes impacting your treatment schedule, your treatment prescription and your presence at the clinic. It was also necessary to answer questions regarding possible symptoms before entering the treatment room. All these actions were thoughtfully designed to keep you as safe as possible. If you have questions or doubts, which is perfectly natural, please contact the health professionals who treat you daily.
You might face a situation where your dialysis companions or family members might contract the disease. In such a case, keep calm and inform your local clinic team, we will provide you with all the required support.
It should also be added that our medical professionals face the risk of contracting themselves the disease and, for this reason, there may be changes in the number of professionals present at the clinic and in the clinic's routines.
Although we are taking all available measures to prevent the disease transmission, we cannot exclude the possibility that some of our patients will contract it. We have therefore introduced new triage procedures to identify patients with symptoms before entering the clinic and we have developed joint contingency plans with the different national authorities to provide dialysis to these patients during their treatment.
Based on the centralised data, most cases of contacting the virus are due to social interaction, so behaviours and our daily activities must be radically changed to minimize the risk of contamination.
In the context of relaxing social distancing conditions after 15th of May, we believe that the risk of contamination may increase. Therefore, in addition to the information your teams provide, let me reinforce some recommendations of utmost importance at this point:
Try not to leave home, except for the situations when you need to go to dialysis treatment.
Keep avoiding social contact and keep a safe distance from other people (x meters).
If you know that a person you have contacted has contracted the disease, immediately inform the clinical team by phone before going to the clinic.
Wear protective equipment during treatment and transportation, as it is requested by the health professionals who treat you, but also when you come into contact with other people outside the clinic.
If you have any symptom like fever, tiredness, dry cough, muscle pain, nasal congestion, sore throat or diarrhoea, abdominal pain, sudden loss of taste and smell, contact the clinic or health authorities.
Respect all recommendations and procedures advised by the health professionals of your clinic.
Contact your clinic to clarify any doubts or questions.
We assure you that all additional prevention and safety measures, as well as disinfection measures carried out after each treatment, air and surface hygiene measures by nebulization, have been taken in all clinics, all of which ensure the best and safest treatment conditions for our patients. We also provide patients and our medical staff with the necessary protective equipment, together with our transport providers we have reorganized the transport to ensure social distance and we are working closely with the authorities to provide the best solutions and treatment conditions.
Our professionals are well prepared to guide you and keep you safe, but your cooperation is indispensable.
We are all together in this battle to fight this new disease.
May 14th 2020
Catalin TACU, Medical Director Diaverum Romania