HEALTH and social-care workers have been stressed during the coronavirus pandemic to the point of having suicidal thoughts, an online rally has heard.

Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan spoke at the Frontline Heroes rally during Labour’s virtual conference on Monday night.

The MP for Tooting is also an A&E doctor who, when Parliament is not sitting, works occasional shifts at St George’s Hospital. She said that they became more frequent during the pandemic.

Dr Allin-Khan described the mental strain on staff due to the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators, the anguish of dying patients’ relatives not being allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones in person and the number of people admitted to hospital with coronavirus. 

She said: “Colleagues on the front line were messaging me at 3am, saying: ‘I can’t sleep, I feel like taking my own life, I am so stressed’.”

Newcastle nurse Miriam Mafemba, a Unison member, said she had been so overwhelmed by the stress of the crisis that she had to have a “period of leave from work.”

She added that her worries over the impact of Covid-19 on BAME workers, and for her family in Zimbabwe, had made her “feel so alone,” but she had received support from her union and colleagues.

Dr Allin-Khan said: “It is an outrage that the government has ignored this mental health crisis.

“The Health Secretary [Matt Hancock] did not meet with any mental health organisations or trusts in the first three months of lockdown. What does that say about how seriously our government takes our mental health?”

She added that it is an “insult” for ministers to have clapped for health and care workers during lockdown but then to “starve them of Labour’s Care for Carers plan to serve the mental health of our front-line care and hospital workers.”