Vers une tenue de protection « santé »

In view of the various health threats observed or suspected, the protection of health personnel (whether in hospital, out-of-hospital or external and humanitarian missions) is always a key issue facing the teams. In the field of biology, even if the agent is identified, knowledge of the routes of contamination (airborne, cutaneous, etc.) is limited in the case of emerging agents (SARS-CoV-2 type). As a result, the means of protection are often over or undersized at the outset, either because of a lack of knowledge of the risk or because of a lack of knowledge of the capacities of the means of protection itself. Most of the professions associated with a particular risk are equipped with specific Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) (Military, Fire Brigade, Industry, Agriculture…) adapted to their own constraints. In the field of health, the supply of PPE is often, with a few exceptions, derived directly from industry or military equipment (protective clothing against chemical risks, for example), but the specific “health” constraints are rarely considered, often resulting in the unsuitability of the latter. PPE legislation is complex and we will summarise the main principles. Two concepts clash and sometimes complement each other between watertight and filtering type of clothing. In the light of hospital and humanitarian experiences, we will try to highlight the essential characteristics that could define our outfits of tomorrow.