Author: Jim

A Day in the Life Story

Over in North Philly, Emily Kehoe tramples through an overgrown back alley as a fierce-sounding dog locked up nearby barks like mad. Kehoe ignores the mutt and presses on, stepping over brambles and trash to a trap set the day before.

“There are leaves, buckets, tires, everything mosquitos like,” says the mosquito surveillance and control technician for the city’s Health Department. “I just saw this area yesterday, thought it’d be a good place for a trap, set one up, and we’ll see if we caught anything.”

She did – dozens upon dozens of Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which like to breed in the small puddles that form inside old tires, discarded buckets, or broken bottles.

“It is an interesting job, that’s for sure – like nothing I’ve had,” says Kehoe, who has a master’s degree in public health. “I’m crawling through alleys, looking in people’s yards for standing water. I do get some strange looks, but once I explain that I’m here to help them get rid of mosquitos, they are fully on board… most of the time.”

Kehoe is on the lookout for Zika, West Nile, and other nasty viruses spread by the bloodsucking bugs. Every day, the city readies itself for a dreadful tomorrow. Officials monitor the outbreaks of diseases and the predicted paths of distant hurricanes. If there is an emergency on this day, the city has 15,552 water bottles on hand, just in case. It’s work that goes unnoticed. And everyone, including those who do it, hope that’s the way things stay.

http://planphilly.com/articles/2018/08/28/a-day-in-the-life-of-philadelphia-and-the-people-who-make-it-go

By Jim Saksa

Response to Rosenstein OpEd

James Garrow, a spokesman for the health department, said Rosenstein’s op-ed doesn’t change the evidence showing that overdose prevention sites save lives.

“The federal government should focus its enforcement on the pill mills and illegal drug traffickers who supply the poison that is killing our residents, not on preventing public health officials from acting to keep Philadelphians from dying,” he said.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/28/san-franciscos-safe-injection-sites-justice-department-759017

By Victoria Colliver, Dan Goldberg, and Rachel Roubein

Pennsylvania Overdose Death Stats

Thomas Farley, Philadelphia’s health commissioner, said the new state-level data suggest that Pennsylvania’s opioid crisis is no longer confined to urban areas.

 

“We’ve always had a bigger heroin problem than the rest of the state,” he said. “What I’m struck by is how much of a problem we have in the rural areas that were previously untouched by this. The opioid crisis is raging through Pennsylvania like the wildfires are raging through California.”

 

He said the rise in fentanyl-related overdoses was particularly concerning.

 

“That’s the top drug here — and it’s 50 times as potent as heroin, much more likely to get people addicted, much more likely to cause an overdose,” he said. “It’s changed the entire nature of the problem.”

http://www2.philly.com/philly/health/addiction/fentanyl-is-killing-more-and-more-people-in-pennsylvania-20180821.html

By Aubrey Whelan