‘The Separate and Unequal Health System’ Highlighted By COVID-19
Enlarge this image
Maria Arechiga, an ICU charge nurse, monitors the progress of two COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Shots — Health News
As Pandemic Deaths Add Up, Racial Disparities Persist — And In Some Cases Worsen
Dr. Stefan Richter follows her in, both telling the other nurse to get lunch now, because later may never come.
There are two patients in the room. Within an hour, both patients’ organs are failing. Arechiga yells for someone to call a Code Blue, a medical emergency.
«May I have your attention please. Code Blue, Code Blue,» booms from the PA system.
Reinforcements arrive. In the urgency, there is practiced calm. A team helps each nurse, doctor and respiratory therapist put on protective gear before they go in to try to resuscitate the patients.
They lose one patient, get the pulse back on another. And then another Code Blue is called. They begin again. Every single person in the critical care unit on this floor is COVID-19 positive.
Enlarge this image
Arechiga checks on an intubated COVID-19 patient. The floor was converted to an ICU unit the week before to help with the surplus of COVID-19 patients.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Shots — Health News
‘Racial Inequality May Be As Deadly As COVID-19,’ Analysis Finds
But at this hospital in Willowbrook, an unincorporated part of South L.A. neighboring Compton and Watts, the pandemic is preying on the inequities that disproportionately hurt Latino and Black communities. The neighborhoods are densely populated and multiple generations of families live together, making it hard to isolate.
It’s a place where most people are on public health insurance and where chronic illnesses are much more prevalent because there is a systemic lack of access to quality health care. Add COVID-19 to that mix and it’s a deadly but predictable disaster.
«This is a community that is largely low-income, people of color,» says Dr. Elaine Batchlor, the CEO of MLK hospital. «This is where the essential workers live. These are the people that are stocking the grocery stores, driving our buses, cleaning up after the rest of us. And they are continuing to be exposed to COVID on the job.»
Enlarge this image
The former gift shop at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital had been converted into a meeting room and is now an overflow patient care area.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
«This is a community that is largely low-income, people of color,» Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, says. «This is where the essential workers live.»
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
Since the day MLK hospital opened in 2015, it has always served more people than it was built to help. The facility replaced a hospital that shuttered in 2007 over deadly conditions.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
A COVID-19 testing site is set up near Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. The hospital is in Willowbrook, an unincorporated part of South Los Angeles sandwiched between Compton and Watts.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
Maria Arechiga (center) helps move an intubated COVID-19 patient to a private room. The patient died later that day. Multiple COVID-19 deaths in one day are not rare at the hospital.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
In the hospital’s tented treatment areas, doctors find themselves having to make devastating decisions: Who should be moved inside next?
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
Doctors and nurses treat patients in triage tents, makeshift ICUs and anywhere else they can make room. About a third of the population of Los Angeles County has been infected with the coronavirus.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
Maria Arechiga takes notes on patients from a nurse who is leaving on lunch break. «I feel like this time around, people are coming in sicker and dying quicker,» she says.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Enlarge this image
Exacerbating the COVID-19 crisis at the MLK facility is that it is essentially the only medical game in town as doctors are reluctant to set up a practice where they cannot be paid.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
Exacerbating the COVID-19 crisis at the MLK facility is that it is essentially the only medical game in town as doctors are reluctant to set up a practice where they cannot be paid.
Gabriella Angotti-Jones for NPR
By the end of the shift on this day, five people are dead. Four are Latino, one is African American. The hospital gives the families a one-time exception to visit when end of life is near.
Jason Prasso, an ICU doctor, is often the one that makes the call and breaks the news.
It’s time to come in. Time to say goodbye.
«Modern medicine has a lot of a lot of interventions and a lot of therapies that we can offer, but this virus has proven resistant and extremely difficult to manage,» he says. «Realistically speaking, there isn’t a whole lot that I can offer besides supportive care as an ICU doctor and trying to prevent things from getting worse. It hurts as a doctor to say that.»
Prasso is cut off by the sound of another Code Blue call.
«Excuse me,» he says. It’s a bad day, a familiar day.
- racial disparities in health care
- COVID
- COVID-19
- racial disparities
- Health Care
Комментарии 0