Philadelphia County has the highest overdose rate of any of the 10 most populous counties in America. The city’s Department of Health estimates that 75,000 residents are addicted to heroin and other opioids, and each day, many of them commute to Kensington to buy drugs. The neighborhood is part of the largest cluster of overdose deaths in the city. In 2017, 236 people fatally overdosed there.
By Jennifer Percy
“We’ve done a number of outreach and community mitigation strategies to try to protect these populations from introducing it here in Philadelphia in any significant way,” he said.
Alles said the health department tested 400 people at Kensington’s Prevention Point earlier this year. They found significant rates of Hepatitis B and C, but no Hepatitis A infections. The department returned to Prevention Point over the summer and vaccinated about 100 people against Hepatitis A, Alles said.
By Joel Wolfram
The Collected Works of Jim Garrow 