Health crisis -'People here are still struggling'

[merh]

Posted on Fri, Mar. 16, 2007
Health crisis
'People here are still struggling'
By RYAN LaFONTAINE and JOSHUA NORMAN
SUN HERALD

GULFPORT - South Mississippi - especially its children - is in the midst of the largest health crisis in recent American memory, according to experts who visited with reporters here Thursday.

"To me, it's the most significant domestic crisis that we've seen in a very long time," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, founder of the Children's Health Fund and a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He has been studying mental health in Katrina-devastated areas.

-snip-

He said recovery - emotional, economic and physical - has sunk in the morass of bureaucracy and political posturing at every level of government.

-snip-

Dr. Persharon Dixon, who runs the Mississippi Gulf Coast Children's Health Care Program, which sends a free medical bus around to local schools, said the parents of four students have been victims of suicide in the past few weeks and one child attempted it. Those are just the cases she knows about.

-snip-

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/16914416.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

God bless the children, God bless these families.

Never Forget the Katrina Survivors! :cry:

[Warpy]

1. Right, the rest of the health care crisis is only done one by one

nationwide. It's all part of the same thing, this country's abandonment of and then cruelty toward its people.

In other words, tell me about it. I've been without insurance for the last twenty years.

If this country and its fine, representative form of government gave one shit for its people, mental health services would be available to the children--and everyone else--after a disaster or even all the time.

This country has become criminally neglectful under conservative administrations from both parties for the last 38 years.

[merh]

3. I couldn't agree with you more.

The thing about Katrina Survivorville (Louisiana & Mississippi Gulf Coast) is the entire community, the southern section of two states (plus part of Alabama and Texas) are in crisis, PTSD is the norm.

If there is a heaven and a judgment day, this administration will have a lot to answer for on the other side.

[NMMNG]

2. Tragic

But until we get Single Payer Universal Health Care this will be the case not only after catastrophic events, but chronically. Millions are in need of care every day and go without because our government turns a blind eye.

[ninkasi]

4. This is such a tragedy...

Those poor kids deserve better. They deserve to have their government really help to get their lives back to as normal as possible. For some, the scars will never heal. It makes me furious that this country is willing to spend more than a trillion dollars to fight an unnecessary war, so the spoiled sociopath in the Oval Office can play at being a "war president", while neglecting our fellow citizens whose lives have been thrown into turmoil by Katrina.

This is not an America I can feel proud of right now. We have lost so much under conservative rule, and I don't see how our standing in the world will ever recover, unless we can reverse the damage done by Bush and his cronies. These kids depend on us, all of us, to see that they are adequately sheltered, fed, and provided for. We are letting them down.

With so many Republic scandals going on, I can't remember if Congress plans to investigate the government's response to Katrina, and leaving so many people to drown and die of starvation. The rescue efforts were criminal in their failures.

[intheflow]

5. I'm the 5th rec to the GP.

Since I came to LBN to post this same story. Here's one excerpt I wanted to emphasize:

Children are in trouble physically and mentally, especially those among displaced families. About 80,000 children are in families still displaced from Katrina, and of those, experts say about a third are already showing behavioral, social or academic problems.

"We lock them in these trailer parks where access to services is hampered by the conditions they find themselves in," Redlener said. "The big treatment is to get these families back into their normal environments."

The federal government recently gave a four-year extension to trailer contractors, which Redlener said is a sign this problem "is not going anywhere anytime soon."

..."It's one thing for adults, but here we have children developing physically, mentally and emotionally under these conditions," he said.

Conditions they find themselves in: suicidal parents and siblings, increased drug and alcohol use, increased domestic and societal violence, and families living in FEMA parks with a car, far away from any public transportation. (Not that there's much public transportation to begin with down here.)

[Rhiannon12866]

6. I agree and K&R from me, too.

This is a national tragedy, especially for the lives of an entire generation of children...;(

[merh]

9. An entire generation down here damaged

and with the way this admin is going, an entire generation nationwide that knows only war. :(

[merh]

8. So glad you came by to post the article - to emphasis some of

what is written in it. This is definitely one article where the paragraph limit is such a hinderance. It contains so much about the crisis.

:hi:

Thanks for the rec & the emphasis :hug:

[Megahurtz]

7. While Our KissAssters in D.C.

freely hand over Billions upon Billions of Dollars to other Countries :mad: constantly
while their own Citizens are lacking, suffering, and dying at home.

Disgusting to no end.:puke:

[merh]

10. I guess this can be said of many DUers ...

But those Americans don't take showers in FEMA trailers. Their children don't figure algebra equations in portable classrooms. They don't attend church in tents and they don't drive along miles of abandoned landscape on their morning commutes.


They just can't relate or take the time to comment, it's hard to tell if they care. :(