Zika could hit people in poverty hardest, By Liz Szabo, June 30, 2016, USA Today: “There’s no mystery about how the mosquitoes got into Shawanda Holmes’ former home. They flew through a gaping hole in the wall. One of the wooden boards on the side of the house is partly missing, covered only by a loose, blue plastic tarp that flows down the outside wall and crumples in a heap on the grass. Rainwater pools in its folds, providing an ideal site for mosquitoes to breed. Trash fills the backyard. Holmes’ home had no air conditioning, and she was afraid to plug in a fan, for fear that water had leaked into the electrical outlet. Mosquitoes repeatedly bit her children, ages 4, 6 and 14. ‘The mosquitoes were tearing us up, no matter what I did,’ said Holmes, 32, who lives in New Orleans’ Center City neighborhood. If Zika spreads in the United States, Americans who live in substandard housing and neglected neighborhoods could face the greatest danger, particularly along the Gulf Coast – where steamy summers, high poverty rates and a dizzying array of mosquitoes could allow the virus to take hold, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine…”
Tag: Disease
Income and Childhood Cancer Relapse
Childhood leukemia patients from low-income areas relapse earlier, study finds, By Ellen Brait, February 23, 2016, The Guardian: “Children who live in high-poverty areas with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) – the most common pediatric cancer – tend to relapse earlier than patients from low-poverty areas even if they are receiving the same treatment, a new study found. The research, published on Tuesday in the journal Pediatric Blood and Cancer, is one of very few on the subject, as ‘investigation of the impact of poverty on outcomes in childhood leukemia has been limited’, according to the study. It looked at the medical results from 575 children from 2000 to 2010 who were treated at major academic medical centers across the United States. The children were all newly diagnosed and between the ages one and 18…”
Hospitals and Food Insecurity
Some hospitals prescribe food, take other steps to fight food insecurity, By Christopher J. Gearon, December 8, 2015, US News and World Report: “At Boston Medical Center, physicians write prescriptions for food when patients don’t have enough to eat. Doctors in the center’s emergency department and more than 20 clinics screen all patients for hunger, writing those who struggle to feed themselves a script to the on-site Preventive Food Pantry. They write a lot of food prescriptions – enough to keep the food pharmacy serving 7,000 people each month…”