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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFlorida Squashed News of Worst TB Outbreak in Decades, Made Worse By Budget Cuts
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/1026177/florida_squashed_news_of_worst_tb_outbreak_in_decades%2C_made_worse_by_budget_cuts/
Florida Squashed News of Worst TB Outbreak in Decades, Made Worse By Budget Cuts
Budget cuts, lack of public services for the homeless and the mentally ill: we know these are huge problems with austerity, problems that utterly devastate individual lives. But they also have drastic public health consequences. Witness Florida, where a TB outbreak was hushed up by authorities and exacerbated by a total dearth of services. Most of the victims were poor and black, homeless or mentally ill, a group neglected by the authorities until it was too late.
Every paragraph in this article in the Palm Beach Post is cringe-inducing:
That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years.
As health officials in Tallahassee turned their focus to restructuring, Dr. Robert Luos 25-page report describing Jacksonvilles outbreak and the measures needed to contain it went unseen by key decision makers around the state. At the health agency, an order went out that the TB hospital must be closed six months ahead of schedule.
Whoops. This outbreak remains far from contained, but the public didn't know about it until recently. Read the full story.
By Sarah Seltzer | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at July 10, 2012, 10:38 am
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)CANNOT REC THIS ENOUGH!
Blue Owl
(50,393 posts)Thanks Gov. Scott!
Tigress DEM
(7,887 posts)It IS important and it's been brought up multiple times... we need them synced so the RECs will be cumulative
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014161540
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002923651
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014162442
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002923579
http://election.democraticunderground.com/1002920961
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002925841
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)with a gopper about diseases that apparently have been contained but some them can flare up again if Americans are denied health care, i.e. preventive shots, et al. He cursed me out yelling at me that would NEVER happened BECAUSE Americans have damn near outed such problems. Now I rest my case. Apparently Gov Scott could care less about his state huh.