United States: Circle the City, a Phoenix, Arizona-based nonprofit organization, has started an IV rehydration program for the homeless in the US’s hottest city as the temperature continuously rises to triple digits to prevent them from succumbing to severe heat-related diseases.
Out of the 645 heat-related deaths reported in the year, half of them were homeless in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
More about the organization and initiative
Dr. Liz Frye, the vice chair of the Street Medicine Institute, which offers training to more than four hundred healthcare teams globally, added that she had no information on any groups other than Circle the City giving out IVs in the streets.
Frye said, “But if that’s what needs to happen to keep somebody from dying, I’m all about it,” as AP News reported.
As summers continue to intensify, health providers in areas such as San Diego and New York are under pressure to provide sufficient housing for homeless patients.
Not the Boston Health Care for Homeless Program, which was referenced in the previous year’s book “Rough Sleepers” now receive patient with mild heat stroke during summer just after the winter patients with frost bite and hypothermia according to Dr. Dave Munson, the street team medical director.
Munson said, “It’s certainly something to worry about,” while adding that temperatures in Boston have reached 100 degrees, where 70 percent of the humidity is recorded during June’s heat wave.
Homeless people are more vulnerable in hot weather
He said that homeless individuals cannot protect themselves from the sun, hot weather, and especially cold because it is hot or cold as they live outside. Moreover, they usually can’t regulate their body temperature because of drugs for mental illness or high blood pressure or if they take drugs because of street substance use.
The Phoenix team look for patients in homeless shelters in dry riverbeds, scopes that and hot alleys and beside the canal systems that supply water to Phoenix. Almost 15 percent of patients meet the criteria for a saline drip as per the dehydration level.
Perla Puebla, the nurse practitioner, said, “We go out every day and find them,” and, “We do their wound care, medication refills for diabetes, antibiotics, high blood pressure,” as AP News reported.