A recent report from Kaiser Health News raises serious concerns about the spread of “medieval diseases” that are resurging in some parts of the US.
“Infectious diseases — some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages — are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard,” the report explains.
Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus — a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals — in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.
People in Washington state have been infected with Shigella bacteria, which is spread through feces and causes the diarrheal disease shigellosis, as well as Bartonella quintana, which spreads through body lice and causes trench fever.
Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs. (source)
While the outbreaks are occurring primarily among the homeless, public health officials warn that these diseases can easily spread outside of that population.
Terms like “disaster” and “public health crisis” are being used to describe the outbreaks.
In his State of the State speech in February, California Governor Gavin Newsom warned, “Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public health crisis,” citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County, and typhus in Los Angeles County.
“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”
The diseases sometimes are referred to as “medieval” because people in that era lived in squalid conditions without clean water or sewage treatment, said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA.
The growing homeless population means more outbreaks are likely.
The report goes on to explain that the homeless population has grown in the past two years, and infectious diseases spread quickly and widely among those who are living outside or in shelters.
“About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California,” the report says.
Sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems and limited access to health care are all factors contributing to the proliferation of these medieval diseases.
Dr. Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County, described what conditions are like for people living on the streets.
“The hygiene situation is just horrendous. It becomes just like a Third World environment where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping,” he said.
Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warned. “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections are not.”
At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A.
There were 167 cases of typhus from Jan. 1, 2018, through Feb. 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department. (source)
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