Reply #9: I Am Not Making This Up ...

[mntleo2]

Homeless shelters have to ignore body-wracking coughs in the middle of the night. I work with the homeless. For instance: Last winter a woman was being housed in a shelter where they stack two people at a time in bunks, close together was coughing nightly, according to another woman staying in that shelter. She told me she could not sleep because of the other woman's constant coughing.

People are always coughing and hacking all night in those places. It was not until months later when "coincidentally" that woman made it into transitional housing and got healthcare that it was discovered she had the kind of TB I was mentioning. The shelter knew she was sick, but ignored it ~ not because they did not care but because it is prevalent out on the street now and when someone needs shelter and it is freezing, what are they going to do ~ send her away? The hospitals are already full or won't take the indigent, and the housing staff are *not* physicians so they cannot diagnose and turn away anybody nor would they want to. It is the choice of either turninhg that woman away to freeze to death on the street or exposing everyone in the shelter to whatever she has that she carries.

This TB is a dirty little secret the health system would rather people do not know about. I am not making this up, I have seen it time and time again.

Cat In Seattle