After Helene, Clean Water Is Main Concern In North Carolina

ABC News: Some NC Nursing Homes Still Without Water, 3 Weeks After Hurricane Helene
More than three weeks ago, Hurricane Helene knocked out the power and running water at James Greene's nursing home in Asheville, North Carolina. Today, Greene, 84, and his fellow residents at Brooks-Howell Home still do not have regular access to safe, running water for their daily activities. "For two weeks we've been unable to shower or wash hands," Greene wrote in a letter to family and friends, which was shared with ABC News. "Maintaining hygiene with hand sanitizers is a constant must." (Parekh, 10/19)

North Carolina Health News: Conditions Improve Across Western NC, But Water Remains An Issue
Since the remnants of Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina’s mountains, flooding rivers and damaging water systems, the demand for drinking water wells has soared in Buncombe County. Shaken, homeowners, businesses, schools and care facilities want to guard against water disruption in the event of future weather events. (Atwater, 10/21)

The Hill: How Hurricane Helene Is Threatening Dialysis Patients
Baxter’s North Cove manufacturing plant supplied roughly 60 percent of IV fluids used by U.S. hospitals, including half of all peritoneal dialysis (PD) fluids for the country. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared PD fluids in shortage last week. ... Options are available for PD patients if they’re unable to access solutions. They can switch to hemodialysis, or they can use less of their supply of PD solution, but both courses of action have drawbacks. Nancy Colobong Smith, national president of the American Nephrology Nurses Association, told The Hill that PD patients using less fluid will have to be more careful about their diet, behaving more like hemodialysis patients who typically only get filtered three times a week. PD patients often say they prefer the at-home option as it affords them more flexibility in their diet. (Choi, 10/20)

Other health news from across the U.S. —

AP: NYC's Closed Vessel Reopens With Safety Features To Curb Suicides
The Vessel, a towering, honeycomb-like sculpture in Manhattan that was popular with tourists before a series of suicides forced its closure in 2021, will reopen Monday with new safety features. ... Related Companies, which owns Hudson Yards, confirmed Sunday that the Vessel will reopen Monday with floor-to-ceiling steel mesh barriers installed on parts of it. Only the upper level sections that have been fitted with mesh will reopen and the top level will remain closed. Tickets are required. (10/20)

The New York Times: In L.A., Street Psychiatrists Offer The Homeless A Radical Step Forward
In a downtown Los Angeles parking lot, a stretch of asphalt tucked between gleaming hotels and the 110 freeway, a psychiatrist named Shayan Rab was seeing his third patient of the day, a man he knew only as Yoh. Yoh lived in the underpass, his back pressed against the wall, a few feet from the rush of cars exiting the freeway. He made little effort to fend for himself, even to find food or water. When outreach workers dropped off supplies, he often let people walk away with them. He could barely converse, absorbed by an inner world that he described in fragments: a journey to Eden, a supersonic train, a slab of concrete hanging in space. (Barry, 10/20)

The Washington Post: Fatal Overdoses Often Happen When Users Are Alone. Hotlines, Sensors Can Save Lives.
They die alone in bedrooms, bathroom stalls and cars. Each year in the United States, tens of thousands of fatal overdoses unfold as tragedies of solitude — with no one close enough to call 911 or deliver a lifesaving antidote. Technology new and old might save some of those lives. Motion detectors blare alarms when someone collapses inside a bathroom at a shelter or clinic. Biosensors detect slowed breathing triggered by an overdose and one day may be capable of automatically injecting overdose reversal medication. Simpler approaches — chat apps and hotlines — keep users connected to help if drugs prove too potent. (Ovalle and Gordon, 10/19)

Chicago Tribune: Mental Illness Put Her In DuPage County Jail. She Died 85 Days Later.
June 3, 2023. Day 76. They walked past an empty wheelchair near the door and found their mom seated alone in one of the jail’s visitation booths, her hollow eyes fixed in a distant gaze. Her cheeks were sunken. Her hands trembled. Dried blood pooled near a crack down the center of her lips. Before schizophrenia, before jail, Reneyda Aguilar-Hurtado would sing and dance while cleaning the apartment and spend hours chatting with her two children over dinner. Now she looked too thin and frail to stand, and the few words she spoke came out raspy and faint. (Bullington, 10/20)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A Missouri Hospital Hides Records. A Journalist Fights It.
Dan Mika had a question about the troubling financial situation at Boone Health. That’s the name of the nonprofit that runs the Boone County Hospital, a health care system in central Missouri that was established in 1921. Like many public hospitals throughout Missouri, it has a board of trustees that is publicly elected. Over the years, as the operations of county hospitals have changed, the systems have often contracted with private entities to run day-to-day operations. (Messenger, 10/20)

KFF Health News: Journalists Address Opioid Settlements, Undiagnosed ADHD, And A Georgia Chemical Fire
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media in the last two weeks to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances. (10/19)