WHO’s Mike Ryan reveals death threats and trauma over Covid-19 work

Dr Mike Ryan has spoken of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after receiving death threats arising from his work during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Irish-born head of emergencies at the World Health Organisation, a veteran of many international war zones, said he has never been as worried for his safety as during the pandemic.

Expressing concern about the state of the health workforce worldwide, Dr Ryan described the proportion of staff suffering PTSD after the pandemic as “horrifying”.

He told an online seminar organised by University College Cork that he probably has PTSD himself.

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“We’ve had death threats here, we’ve been shouted at. I’ve worked all over the world in the most extreme situations, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I have never been as scared personally for my own safety as I have been during Covid. That’s an incredible thing to say, living in Geneva, Switzerland, most of the time.”

Base social discourse

Describing the perception that healthcare workers are no longer safe as “real”, he said he had never experienced as many health workers being threatened and abused, as the standard of discourse in society drops.

“I mean the level of discourse we see on Twitter and other places. I mean the baseness in the way people engage with each other, the lack of basic human respect in communications. That’s not just a health issue, that has happened across society. The idea that you can just attack someone and walk away, the idea that you can disrespect someone, and then just ignore the reality that you’ve done that. Maybe social media is driving that, but it’s also then passing over into the real world, and the way people interact.”

While ordinary people had a “deep gratitude” for healthcare workers’ efforts, there was a “dark, dark periphery” of people who “seek to destroy” communities coming together.

[ Covid-19 pandemic not over, Ryan warns ]

Dr Ryan said the Covid-19 pandemic is not over and health services and their staff are ill-prepared to deal with any recurrence of mass infections.

With “considerable uncertainties” about the future course of the pandemic, the world could yet be “taken by surprise” by the emergence of a new variant, he warned.

“We can see a finishing line, but we’re not there yet,” he told the webinar on Tuesday.