TDs have pledged to support people suffering vaccine injuries along with health care staff who are being segregated due to vaccine status.
“We need a voice out there for both sides. There is a voice out there to say vaccines are a great thing and the best of luck to people who found that. For people who became sick from or are unable to take a vaccine there is very little support out there and their voices are not being heard,” Independent West Cork TD Michael Collins said.
Deputy Collins was among four TD’s to attend a meeting with members of the INFTO (Irish Nurses for Transparency and Openness) in Dublin on Tuesday.
“You are presenting views that the media don’t want to publish and that is unfortunate because there are two sides to every story. Quite a lot of people presented to me that have been ill after the vaccine. Equally there are very many who are perfectly well. But for those who didn’t feel well there should be an outlet for them to talk and discuss their difficulties but that outlet isn’t there,” Deputy Collins said.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath said ‘there were too many voices being suppressed’ and said he would be working to ensure those voices would be heard.
Deputy Richard O’Donoghue told the meeting he had been contacted by a number of constituents that suffered an adverse reaction. He expressed concern that some people were being pressured into taking a vaccine, particularly in health care settings.
“Nobody should be pressurised into taking a vaccine,” he said.
The lunchtime meeting heard claims that suspected adverse reactions were previously shown to be vastly under-reported due to the laborious process involved.
“Suspected vaccine adverse effects are the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about because anybody who does is immediately labelled anti-vax,” INFTO spokesman Paddy Hennessy said.
“We have a wholly inadequate reporting system to the HPRA who are charged with monitoring the safety of these. We have reports that it’s taking between twenty and sixty minutes for an experienced health care worker to complete one of these reports. It’s well documented and accepted by the HSE, within the medical and scientific community that between 90 and 99 per cent of suspected adverse reactions are never reported,” Mr Hennessy, who is a registered nurse, told the meeting.
“The information is insufficient it’s not painting a true picture of what we are seeing on the ground and certainly not what INFTO members are reporting witnessing in their patients,” he said.
The meeting heard personal testimonies from nurses concerned about patient care due to covid restrictions such as a ban on family visits and others who had been taken off ward duties due to their vaccine status.
One nurse said she felt staff were being coerced and browbeaten into taking a covid 19 vaccine.
“We use a risk assessment tool to manage and mitigate risk in work and basically this tool is being weaponised against staff and it’s being used to coerce and browbeat staff into partaking in the vaccination process when they are not comfortable doing so. Their bodily autonomy is not being respected, their right to make a choice regarding their own personal health is not being respected.”
“We wouldn’t treat patients that way. We are qualified staff, we are educated, we are taught to ask questions – that’s considered best practice. That you know what you are administering and how it might react with other medications but we don’t know the components of these vaccines.
“We are told we might be removed from patient interaction if deemed a risk. We have significant staffing issues in the community. Patients are starting to back up in the acute units because we can’t get health care assistants to provide care with home care packages. To think we are possibly isolating staff who are qualified to care for those patients based on their vaccination status is incredulous to me.
“Where was this risk assessment tool when we were being asked to go into covid wards with no PPE?” the nurse said.
Another nurse said she’d witnessed increases in presentations among young people requiring alcohol detox, paracetamol overdose and anorexia in the last 18 months, which she said was due to the effects of covid restrictions.
“At the same time, patients are not allowed have their next of hold their hand – it’s wrong.
“There’s no words for what’s been allowed happen, patients are being forgotten about, best practice seems to have been thrown out the window,” the nurse said.
The meeting heard from a healthcare worker in the south who said wheelchair bound clients were kept alone in rooms all day and deprived of family visits and normal daily activities. She feared her non-verbal clients did not understand the situation and may have felt they were being individually punished.
Another INFTO member said her experience was that vaccines were rolled out ‘hell for leather to everybody’.
“There was no concern for clear informed consent, previous covid 19 status for natural immunity, no regard for medications a person was taking or previous medical history and no consideration for prophylactics,” she said.
Deputy Michael Healy-Rae thanked the INFTO members for sharing their testimonies and said it was important to hear their experience of what is happening in hospitals and residential care settings.