Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Undocumented Immigrants Risk Black Market To 'Treat' Covid
The New York Times: Desperate For Covid Care, Undocumented Immigrants Resort To Unproven Drugs
On a Tuesday afternoon in April, among tables of vegetables, clothes and telephone chargers at Fresno’s biggest outdoor flea market were prescription drugs being sold as treatments for Covid. Vendors sold $25 injections of the steroid dexamethasone, several kinds of antibiotics and the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — the malaria drugs pushed by President Donald J. Trump last year — make regular appearances at the market as well, as do sham herbal supplements. (Maxmen, 6/20)
KHN: ‘It’s A Mission’: Volunteers Treat Refugees Massing At The Border
El Chaparral Plaza once teemed with tourists, street vendors and idling taxis. But the plaza, just outside the San Ysidro port of entry on the Mexican side of the border, now serves as a sprawling refugee camp where migrants from Mexico, Central America and Haiti wait in limbo while they seek asylum in the U.S. Dr. Hannah Janeway, an emergency medicine physician who works in a Los Angeles hospital but volunteers at the border, estimates at least 2,000 people are jammed into tents and repurposed tarps here, living without running water and electricity. (de Marco, 6/21)
KHN: Nurses And Docs At Long Beach Center ‘Consider It An Honor’ To Care For Migrant Children
The 5-year-old had nodded off while waiting for her 10-year-old brother to be treated for scabies at the clinic in the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center, which she currently calls home. Nurse Chai-Chih Huang asked if she wanted to be taken back to her dormitory to sleep. “She looked so sad and didn’t say anything,” Huang recalled. The girl’s brother explained that they had been separated for a week during their journey. His sister cried every day without him, he said. Now, she wanted to stick close at all times. (Stephens, 6/21)
