Doctor on front lines of Philly's heroin crisis: People who need treatment can't get it
Camille Paglia is medical director of the psychiatric Crisis Response Center at Temple University Hospital's Episcopal Campus, something of a MASH unit for Philadelphia's heroin epidemic.
Sitting not far from the train tracks in Kensington where addicts congregate to use — and often, die — the center serves as a rescue station and referral point for treatment elsewhere.
All too often, however, Paglia and her staff are forced to tell patients just saved from overdosing that there are no beds in the rehab system for them. Many return to Episcopal the next day and the next, hoping for better news.
Others go back to the needle right away; they need walk only a short distance to what law enforcement considers the biggest open-air drug market on the East Coast. Some don't survive the night — police have found the bodies of addicts, still wearing hospital wristbands, out near the tracks.
Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/health/addiction/Inside-Philadelphias-heroin-MASH-unit.html
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