At an opioid crisis conference, up on stage at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, a city health worker demonstrated how to administer NARCAN Nasal Spray, if you suspect someone is experiencing an overdose.
Allison Herens, the city health department’s harm-reduction coordinator, approached the torso of a mannequin, telling the audience the first step is to alert the person you’re there to help.
By Steve Tawa
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was confirmed to have treated two cases in August, three cases have been confirmed in New Jersey this year and three more cases were confirmed in Pittsburgh, the Inquirer reported. But the Philadelphia Health Department told the newspaper that no cases involving Philadelphia residents have been confirmed.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/polio-virus-acute-flaccid-myelitis-kids-/
By Bailey King
First widely acknowledged in 2014, the disease seems to ebb and flow on a two-year cycle, with an uptick in 2016 and again this year, according to an advisory from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
By Tom Avril
The city’s Department of Public Health offered free hepatitis-A vaccines for the first time to OutFest participants. Rhona Cooper, the department’s clinical coordinator for public health preparedness, said her OutFest team vaccinated 38 people during the block party.
http://www.epgn.com/news/local/13862-outfest-draws-younger-more-diverse-crowd
By Adriana Fraser
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
However, Allison Herens, who has served as Philadelphia’s harm-reduction coordinator for about one year, said she hoped the effort to teach people how to use the strips would extend the general conversation about harm reduction during the opioid crisis.
“Just like every other harm-reduction effort, it’s not going to save everyone’s life,” Herens said about the test strip initiative. “But it opens the door to conversations with people to help reinforce safer [drug-using] practices. It opens it up to a much bigger conversation that should be happening on a regular basis.”
By Courtenay Harris Bond
Helping young men and women to avoid high risk situations may reduce the likelihood of being a victim, as well as being a perpetrator. This means rethinking how we talk and think about sexual violence to include ways how each and every one of us can take responsibility and accountability for our actions, in that moment, in the weeks after, and in the decades after. Too often the emphasis is on the victim and how they should or should have conducted themselves to avoid the predatory actions of others; rather than giving everyone the tools they need to navigate risky situations and the consequences of their behavior.
“It’s not easy,” said Allison Herens, harm reduction coordinator at Philadelphia’s Public Health Department. She conducts regular trainings about naloxone and how to administer it, and recently led one for about two-dozen people at the South Philadelphia Library on Broad Street.
“There are lots of different kinds of emergencies that happen on the street in any moment and it can be hard to discern if it’s actually an emergency or not,” she told the group.
By Nina Feldman
The overdoses were linked to drugs purchased mostly around McPherson Square and Kensington and Allegheny Avenues over Friday and Saturday. While test results are pending, officials believe a combination of heroin or fentanyl and the synthetic cannabinoid K2 were involved, according to an email alert from the Department of Health obtained by the Inquirer and Daily News.
By Aubrey Whelan
The Collected Works of Jim Garrow 