Strikes by nurses in the NSW Public Health System are part of a global phenomenon as an exhausted profession says enough is enough.

At the end of May this year, the World Health Organisation estimated that “at least” 115,000 health workers had died from COVID-19.

Nurses make up a significant part of these fatalities, although the WHO says the exact number is unknown due to inadequate reporting.

The risks and dangers nurses face while providing fundamental services has led to a raft of strikes throughout the world, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Many have argued that heroics were required only because of government neglect, underfunding, and lack of preparation for a pandemic we knew was coming.

“Many workers are justifiably angry. COVID-19 appears to have led to a substantial uptick in strike actions by healthcare workers,” the authors wrote.

Common demands underlying nearly all these actions relate to inadequate responses to COVID-19 and inadequate protections for frontline workers; every group taking action has explicitly demanded more PPE, they said.

In the United States, the abysmal record of the Trump administration in response to COVID led to a surge in strike activity – predominantly in the health sector.

Of the eight major strikes in the United States in 2020, half involved nurses, including 7800 nurses who struck against Swedish Medical Centers in Washington – the largest strike in the country that year.

On May Day this year, members of the Massachusetts Nurses’ Association at St Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester marked the 55th day of strike action. It is believed to be the longest running strike in the country for nearly 30 years.

Tenet Healthcare owns St Vincent’s. The company received over $3 billion in federal government stimulus money, yet actually put staff on leave without pay during the crisis. It was left to the nurses’ union to find thousands of dollars to buy PPE for its members, according to Nation magazine.

On 28 April, 4000 health workers announced a strike at Allina Health in Minnesota, as did 725 nurses at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu.

National Nurses United told Time Magazine that its members engaged in more than double the number of actions compared to the previous year.

Asia, too, has seen strike activity from nurses and other health workers.

In the Indian state of Maharashtra, 6000 nurses went on a two-day strike during June against low wages, long working hours and huge vacancies in hospitals.

In Sri Lanka, 30,000 nurses held a two-day national strike at the end of June over deteriorating work conditions since the pandemic began.

In South Korea, the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union has called for a general strike on 1 September, demanding the expansion of the hospital workforce and the strengthening of public healthcare.

In New Zealand, over 30,000 nurses and midwives walked off the job on 9 June for an eight-hour strike.

The New Zealand Nursing Organisation (NZNO) said its members were struggling under increasing caseloads with limited staff. It said nurses were underpaid and burnt out, with conditions worsening since the arrival of COVID-19.

“Current pay rates do not attract people into the profession or retain people, and staffing levels have stretched them to breaking point, putting them and their patients at risk,” the NZNO said.

NZNO members voted for three more strikes in late July, August and September.

In Europe, more than 5000 Danish nurses – or 10 per cent of the nursing workforce – went on strike in June, while weeks earlier ICU nurses in France walked off the job.

Latin America has become the global hotspot of COVID. Collectively, the region’s death rate per capita is eight times the world rate.

Nurses, other health workers and unions there have been prominent in strikes and social actions protesting the lamentable records of their governments during the pandemic.

In Colombia, nurses and other health workers were at the forefront of a national strike that rocked the country for more than five weeks during May and June. One of the main triggers for the national uprising was a health reform – the infamous “Law 010” – that would have seen almost total privatisation of the Colombian health system.

Colombia has already seen harsh neoliberal reforms introduced into health over past decades, including the casualisation of the health workforce. Nearly 30 per cent of the country’s nurses are on casual, fixed-term contracts.

According to Public Services International (PSI), Law 010 would have “handed over important sectors of the country’s health system into the hands of business groups”, creating a model similar to that of the United States.

A massive mobilisation led by the union movement – in the face of rampant COVID and a savage government response that led to at least 63 deaths during the protests – forced the government to eventually cancel its reforms.