Welcome. The purpose of this website is to gather materials to help homeless service providers plan for and respond to H1N1 (swine) flu.
Homeless persons may bear particular risk of contracting influenza because of crowded and unsanitary living conditions, stressed immune systems, and close contact with highly transient persons. This is also the case for other communicable diseases, but the rapidly developing swine flu epidemic calls for increased precautions and vigilance. John Lozier, National Health Care for the Homeless Council Here are some key resources:
The National Health Care for the Homeless Prevention Council also provides information on communicable diseases. There is potentially a lot to assimilate and to do, and it could feel overwhelming. It seems to me that the easiest thing to do is to just work with the fifth resource listed above (Swine Flu in the News...). If you have more time, you could read all of the materials above and then to use the response checklist to begin implementing a plan. Hand sanitizing and limiting the effect of sneezing and coughing are very important ways to limit the spread of flu. Here are downloadable and printable posters for these concerns. It may well be necessary to take care of moderately ill individuals in shelter environments. Here is guidance on how to do this. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provide authoritative and up to date information. Here is the CDC swine flu page. Effect Measure is a blog run by senior public health scientists and practitioners, and provides an interesting behind the scenes perspective. Here is a regularly updated map of where swine flu is being found. The resources mentioned in this paragraph are not specific to homelessness. If you'd like to participate in a Google group (Google account required) intended to facilitate sharing of information among those interested in this subject, here is a link:
Thanks for your interest. John Records Executive Director Committee on the Shelterless (COTS) If you would like to help build this resource and be given authorization to edit this page, please contact me. |
