What is PPE?

What is PPE?

If you pick up the newspaper these days, you are bound to come across the acronym PPE. What is it? Personal Protective Equipment.

It is the materials that people need to use to protect themselves in order to do their jobs. Construction workers need things like sturdy boots and hard hats and goggles, for example, while at the construction site. Doctors and nurses and other care workers need to protect themselves in order to help sick people. These include masks to protect their nose and mouth, gloves for their hands, protective eye goggles, gowns to wear over their clothes, and slip covers for their shoes.

This equipment protects the medical personnel from being overly exposed to the virus in patients they are treating. They also change it all when attending to the next patient so that they don’t carry over any germs from one patient to the next.

This is pretty essential equipment to keep us and them safe.

Why are we talking about it these days?

There is a shortage of some of this essential equipment in the world as countries deal with increasing cases of coronavirus. Ordinary people like you and me are wearing them if we go into public spaces like shops and markets to buy supplies. Some of them are washable, some are not. So companies across the globe are trying to make more, even as more businesses and factories are kept closed.

Written by: Sunaina Murthy