[ad_1]
LAMESA, Texas – Running between patients, Dr Eileen Sprys stops to catch her breath, tries to pull herself together, but can’t mask her frustration: Health workers at her COVID-besieged West Texas hospital have been barred from the first shipment of Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, and they don’t know when they can get it.
Not a single rural hospital in this state, proud of its rural roots, has received doses of the vaccine this week, despite these medical outposts serving about 20% of the state’s population, or 3 million people.
Even before the pandemic, rural hospitals in Texas and many other states were operating on “skin and bone” staff and budgets, Sprys said.
“We’re all exposed all the time,” she says. “We do not have an isolated COVID wing or staff only dedicated to COVID unlike large hospitals. Not being included in the first shipment of vaccines is so upsetting.”
This is not the first sign of inequality in the pandemic. Poor residents of rural and urban areas across the United States have lamented not receiving treatments and drugs as better off, nor the quantity or quality of the tests.
Sprys, his three medical colleagues and the 28 nurses at Lamesa Medical Arts Hospital have been eagerly awaiting the vaccine for months, hoping it would bring relief to Dawson County.
One of the poorest counties in Texas, nearly a quarter of Dawson’s 13,000 residents live in poverty. To date, it has recorded 1,325 coronavirus cases and 42 deaths, according to the state health department’s tally.
Rural hospitals across the country, and particularly in Texas, face widespread shutdowns after years of budget cuts. Some 27 rural hospitals have closed in Texas over the past decade, double that of any other state.
If it hadn’t been for a $ 10 billion federal stimulus targeting rural hospitals across the country in May, another half-dozen small Texas facilities would have closed, estimated John Henderson, president of the United Nations. Texas rural and community hospitals.
Needles in the arms
Texas State Department health departments are responsible for determining where the vaccine goes. A 17-person expert panel is tasked with providing recommendations on allocations to the state’s health commissioner, Dr John Hellerstedt, who has final say on deliveries.
In a December 14 letter sent to rural health advocates, Hellerstedt praised their patience and wrote that a “more inclusive” strategy of who gets vaccines will begin next week and that the pending approval of the Moderna vaccine would help. to alleviate rural shortages.
Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for the state’s health services, said there were two main reasons rural areas were left out of the initial shipments of Pfizer vaccine. One is that the smaller shipment contains 975 doses, so the state sent it to hospitals who said they had that many healthcare workers to vaccinate.
The second reason is that the Pfizer vaccine must be stored in special freezers, which larger facilities were more likely to have. But this reasoning irritates Lamesa’s doctors because their hospital had bought one of these freezers in advance.
The Moderna vaccine, Van Deusen said, is easier to store and will be able to ship with a minimum of 100 doses, which means it can be piped to smaller hospitals.
Time is running out, said Henderson of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals.
“You have a doctor absent from coronavirus in a small town, and that may mean you’ve just lost half of your medical staff,” he said.
Henderson said the state should embrace alternatives – such as regional medical centers not vaccinating low-risk staff and instead reserving certain doses for rural frontline doctors and nurses.
‘Answer the call’
It is difficult to recruit doctors to work in a small town, and those who do are considered the crown jewels of their communities. Many residents interviewed in Lamesa said they wanted their medical staff to be immediately protected.
Debbie Aylesworth, 67, credits Sprys and staff at Lamesa Hospital with preventing her from taking a ventilator when she had COVID-19 a few months ago. After Aylesworth was exposed to the virus in October, Sprys texted her daily to ask if she was showing symptoms.
Without Sprys’ insistence, Aylesworth said she likely would have delayed seeking treatment and ended up being much worse.
“These doctors are answering the call,” she said. “They are facing the worst of what this pandemic is causing, so they should see the benefits of the vaccine.”
Josh Stevens, the mayor of Lamesa, said the area has been as brutalized by the pandemic as anywhere else in Texas.
To make matters worse, he said, about 85 percent of the city’s population is considered essential labor – most working in agriculture with oil and gas – this which means that more citizens of Lamesa have been on the front lines.
“Most of the people of Lamesa have nowhere to hide from this virus, and our doctors have had to face this reality,” he said. “Them not being on the front line getting the shot is a slap in the face for all of rural Texas.”
[ad_2]
Source link