Dr. Christina Wang administers a flu vaccine to a houseless patient. Photo courtesy of Civil Beat.
In a Sept. 14 front-page article in The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, HHHRC's Dr. Christina Wang responded to the recent sweeps of persons experiencing homelessness during the pandemic emergency:
“What ends up happening is the patient loses a lot of continuity of care,” she said. “They get shuffled along and we can’t find them, our outreach workers can’t find them, and then they sort of get lost for a while and we have to start all over again. So, it really does a disservice to actually fixing the larger crux of the issues.”
Dr. Wang was joined by ACLU Hawai'i Executive Director Josh Wisch and Deja Ostrowski, an attorney with the Medical Legal Partnership for Children.
The use of "sanitation" to describe these efforts furthers stigma against members of our community who are already viewed as "others." Those who are jailedwill be exposed to facilities that are overcrowded and have been deficient on hygiene and sanitation even prior to COVID. OCCC recently reported 100 new positive tests among prisoners, bringing its positivity totals to 155 inmates and 18 staff.
On Sept. 2 Hawai῾i Public Radio featured a story on the impact of these sweeps in Chinatown, with a quote from HHHRC’s Mono Ah Nee Bahn.
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