This is 2018 in America: We're handing out human poop bags as public health infrastructure has rotted so completely that vaccine-preventable hepatitis A is exploding nationwide. My investigation: huffingtonpost.com/entry/hepatiti…
Cases of hepatitis A, a vaccine-preventable disease that attacks the liver and is spread by fecal contamination, have tripled this past year as outbreaks pop up across the country among the homeless and drug-using populations. We're nearing 11,000 cases and 80 people have died.
The millions spent to fight it don’t address the root causes of the underlying problem: a decaying public health infrastructure, devastated by years of funding cuts, that can’t fully meet the twin needs of a population driven to homelessness and devastated by the opioid epidemic.
“Unfortunately I see this hepatitis A outbreak as a symptom of the fraying social safety net,” @DocJeffD said "If these large hepatitis A outbreaks were happening.. on college campuses, you’d probably see a different level of energy around getting resources mobilized to respond."
Nowhere were the consequences of public health cuts more obvious than in West Virginia. The state instituted a 24% cut in state aid to public health departments in 2016, and several leadership positions remained unfilled. And now they have the second largest outbreak in the U.S.
And these outbreaks have been costly: San Diego County estimates it spent $12.5 million to quell its outbreak, which is one-quarter the size of West Virginia’s. Kentucky has allocated $2 million so far to the vaccine alone, which doesn’t even count federal money.
“I’ve seen people about to die of it — wait till they’re about to die before they go in,” Terrell, a day shelter attendee in Charleston, West Virginia told me. “Isn’t it a third-world disease and some shit?”
“There is a good reason to suspect that this will further spread to other states,” @DrGuptaMD , formerly West Virginia's public health commissioner warned. “This is not yet over.”
My story: huffingtonpost.com/entry/hepatiti…
My story: huffingtonpost.com/entry/hepatiti…
