Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is designing a 400-bed facility for homeless people in Toronto in its first Canadian project, a top official said on Tuesday, prompted by the risks posed by COVID-19 to vulnerable sections of society.
MSF’s move comes as advocates are calling for faster action to prevent the spread of the virus among a population uniquely at risk of being infected and infecting others.
“Rarely do we consider actually doing operations in the context where there are healthy, functional health systems and standards of living are generally high,” MSF Canada executive director Joseph Belliveau said. “But COVID is changing the playing field.”
Photo: Reuters
A spokeswoman for Inner City Health Associates, which will provide clinical services at the facility, said it would be up and running in about 10 days.
The city and province of Ontario are sharing the cost, which has yet to be determined.
MSF is sharing its expertise with local health workers to design the coronavirus facility for the homeless, Belliveau said.
The group is also considering taking on projects with other vulnerable populations in Canada — indigenous communities and the elderly in long-term care facilities, which have been hardest hit by COVID-19.
Thirty homeless people in Toronto have already tested positive for COVID-19, including 11 people in a shelter specifically for refugees, the city said on Tuesday.
The death toll in Canada from the coronavirus outbreak reached 900, the latest government data showed.
Homeless individuals cannot meet the demands of social distancing. They share washrooms and sleep on bunk beds or mats centimeters away from one another, making contagion likely.
They also often suffer underlying medical conditions that make the illness more serious when it does break out.
A study by Health Providers Against Poverty found Toronto’s shelters were staffed by workers who often lack basic personal protective equipment, making them more likely to be infected and infect others.
“This is a public health emergency on top of a public health emergency,” said Janice Abbott, chief executive of Atira, which works with homeless and at-risk women in Vancouver.
With coffee shops and 24-hour fast-food restaurants, where those without homes often spend time, shut down to prevent the spread of the virus, some doctors are keeping homeless people longer in emergency rooms, putting a greater burden on already stretched hospitals, Toronto doctor Kate Hayman said.
“For many, many years, we’ve been discharging people into homelessness without hesitating. And homelessness is a life-threatening condition. But with COVID, homelessness has become acutely a life-threatening condition,” she said.
Toronto, which is Canada’s most-populous city, has placed just over 6 percent of its more than 7,000 homeless people in hotel rooms, a city spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
That is not enough, said family physician Samantha Green, who helped author the study that found unsafe conditions in many city shelters, adding: “They need to move much, much, much faster... These are extraordinary times and the city needs to be taking extraordinary measures.”
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS