Street medicine teams search for homeless people to deliver lifesaving IV hydration in extreme heat

[sl8]

https://apnews.com/article/extreme-heat-homeless-health-care-c57bbafdc936a36248be593df9036f13

Street medicine teams search for homeless people to deliver lifesaving IV hydration in extreme heat

BY ANITA SNOW
Updated 12:10 AM EDT, July 1, 2024

PHOENIX (AP) — Alfred Handley leaned back in his wheelchair alongside a major Phoenix freeway as a street medicine team helped him get rehydrated with an intravenous saline solution dripping from a bag hanging on a pole.

[...]

“It’s a lot better than going to the hospital,” Handley said of the team that provides health care to homeless people. He’s been treated poorly at traditional clinics and hospitals, he said, more than six years after being struck by a car while he sat on a wall, leaving him in a wheelchair.

Circle the City introduced its IV rehydration program as a way to protect homeless people from life-threatening heat illness as temperatures regularly hit the triple-digits in America’s hottest metro. Homeless people accounted for nearly half of the record 645 heat-related deaths last year in Maricopa County, which encompasses metro Phoenix.

Dr. Liz Frye, vice chair of the Street Medicine Institute that provides training to hundreds of health care teams worldwide, said she didn’t know of groups other than Circle the City administering IVs on the street.

[...]

[rampartc]

1. jesus christ! open as many high school gyms and turn on the a/c.

iv saline as a solution to homeless dehydration. what the f^$* are we?

wait until a woman reaches sepsis before removing the infecting agent? this is insane.

earlier, less invasive, intervention is best in most cases. don't you agree?