By Leonardo Benessatto
SAO CARLOS, Brazil, April 19 (Reuters) – The fight against COVID-19 is a lone fight with patients being forced to be isolated in intensive care units, removed from family and friends.
But two nurses in the town of Sao Carlos, in the state of Sao Paulo, have discovered a way to help with a millimeter of latex and hot water that mimics a human touch.
Semei Araújo Cunha and Vanessa Formenton improvised the technique they call ‘hands of love’ while working in the Santa Felicia Emergency Care Unit.
They fill medical gloves for latex with hot water in a shower in the hospital and tie them up like water balloons.
Cunha demonstrates how she puts the gloves on an unconscious man who is fighting for his life against COVID-19 and places one glove on each side of the hand.
“The patient feels comforted as if someone is holding their hands,” Formenton said.
The man is one of several patients sharing a small hospital room, and each person is addicted to a series of machines that monitor their vital with a cacophony of beeps and alarms.
The two nurses developed the method about a month ago because the current brutal boom in COVID-19 was starting to pick up quickly. Brazil currently leads the world with daily average COVID-19 deaths and is second in the United States in total death toll.
Warming up the patients’ hands holds several benefits, in addition to the emotional support it can provide, they say, including increased blood flow.
Cold hands can lead to incorrect readings of patients’ oxygen levels in blood, which falsely show that oxygen levels are low. The gloves ensure that this does not happen.
Hospitals across the city are now using the technique, with staff praising the “hands of love” for immediate results.
“It’s amazing that you can see how fast the change is in the patient, it’s amazing,” Cunha said.
(Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto; Writing by Jake Spring; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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