That dedication is evident among more than nurses and doctors. Her office is Skid Row: A doctor tends to the staggering needs of the homeless She gently cleaned dusty arms with alcohol wipes and administered the shots. People sat before Bobenrieth, often parking carts filled with salvaged metal or sleeping bags, to roll up their sleeves. “No, just one time, in six months,” replied a police officer who specializes in homeless outreach and was accompanying the nurses. “I come get a booster every month?” asked one man who’d been recently immunized. “At the beginning, a lot of people said, ‘I don’t need that. They had plenty of takers word has gotten out on the street about the outbreak and many are scared. The challenges became clear on Wednesday, when county public health nurse Paulina Bobenrieth and three fellow nurses set up outside a public restroom near city hall that’s often used by homeless people, and gently asked passers-by if they’d been vaccinated. A hepatitis A outbreak has killed numerous homeless people and sent hundreds to the hospital. “It’s challenging on so many levels.” A woman with her belongings in downtown San Diego. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer. Wooten metal storm shelter free#Many routinely turn away offers of free vaccines or medical attention. Issues such as mental illness and a deep culture of mistrust of the government also make many homeless patients difficult to reach or reason with. In the case of hepatitis A, this allows a carrier to keep spreading it. Because homeless people are transient and receive little regular health care, even severe illnesses can go unnoticed and untreated for long periods. “It could take a year or more.”ĭoctors and nurses here are grappling with a population that’s extremely challenging to work with, or even find. Jonathan Fielding, a UCLA professor who previously headed the LA County Department of Public Health. “I don’t expect this is going to be solved overnight,” said Dr. city, and many health officials fear the outbreak could worsen as new cases continue to surface. The city of San Diego had more than 5,600 homeless residents at last count, the fourth-largest population of any U.S. It’s an extraordinary campaign to control an outbreak that’s so far known to have stricken 481 and killed 17 here, mainly people who are homeless or drug users, or work with them. And on Monday, the first city-sanctioned homeless camp - with 200 four-person tents, security, showers, and bathrooms - is slated to open in a parking lot near Balboa Park. Armies of nurses walk through encampments and even into riverbeds and canyons to offer the highly effective hepatitis A vaccine to homeless people. Workers in hazmat suits spend mornings spraying bleach onto streets and sidewalks. More than 60 new hand-washing stations dot the city. Wooten metal storm shelter portable#There are clusters of newly installed portable toilets open and guarded 24 hours a day. San Diego will power wash streets amid hepatitis outbreak “In some ways, it was the perfect storm.” Robert Schooley, who chairs the division of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Diego, and currently serves as an informal health adviser to the city’s mayor. “I’m not so much surprised it occurred, but surprised it didn’t occur earlier,” said Dr. So it was only a matter of time, experts say, before cases would surge among the homeless. Hepatitis A is transmitted through contact with feces from an infected person, and in close, unsanitary conditions, the highly contagious virus can spread explosively. The lines of tents stretched for blocks.Īt the same time, the city was locking and removing bathrooms to help control the rampant drug and prostitution trade they’d spawned. SAN DIEGO - The hepatitis A outbreak now roiling this well-heeled, coastal city may have had its roots in a baseball game - when the city cleaned up for the 2016 All-Star Game by pushing its homeless out of the touristy areas downtown and into increasingly congested encampments and narrow freeway onramps just east of downtown. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More
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