How New Orleans is dealing with a surge in heat-related diseases : NPR

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

With dangerously excessive temperatures throughout the nation, hospitals are seeing an increasing number of folks with probably deadly warmth sickness. Drew Hawkins of the Gulf States Newsroom explains how one Southern metropolis is dealing with a brand new medical actuality.

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DREW HAWKINS, BYLINE: It is about 3 o’clock within the afternoon in New Orleans, however the streets are empty. The warmth index is properly over 100 levels. Underneath the blazing solar, the pavement of the town’s ambulance depot is scorching. EMS Captain Janick Lewis is exhibiting me how they load stretchers into one of many newer ambulances.

JANICK LEWIS: Clearly, the nicest factor about being assigned to a brand-new unit is it is a brand-new air con system.

HAWKINS: The latest ambulances include a way more highly effective AC, and Lewis says nowadays they really want it. An excessive amount of warmth can result in a situation referred to as hyperthermia. That is when your core physique temperature will get too excessive.

LEWIS: The No. 1 factor we will do to handle any individual is get them out of the warmth, get them someplace cool. So the No. 1 factor we spend our time worrying about for {the summertime} is maintaining the truck cool.

HAWKINS: Simply final week, New Orleans logged 29 emergency calls associated to warmth signs, greater than thrice the quantity for a similar interval final yr. Lieutenant Titus Carriere can also be with New Orleans EMS, and he says individuals who reside and work exterior are particularly in danger, like unhoused folks.

TITUS CARRIERE: That is the very first thing I actually consider is hyperthermia as a result of they have been usually laying in tents within the excessive warmth.

HAWKINS: Carriere says your physique is generally actually nice at maintaining itself cool. But when your inner temperature will get previous 100, you begin experiencing warmth exhaustion. You may have signs like weak point, dizziness and possibly a headache. Carriere says if you will get out of the warmth and into some AC, usually you will get well by yourself. However should you do not, you would enter into the following stage – warmth stroke.

CARRIERE: As soon as you progress to warmth stroke, your physique stops compensating. You cease sweating. You are scorching. You are dry, and your organs are principally, like, frying themselves from the within out.

HAWKINS: If you cannot sweat, it is even tougher in your physique to get well. Warmth stroke may also trigger confusion and fast heartbeat. It’s possible you’ll even lose consciousness. Carriere says EMS begins intervening as quickly as they arrive on the scene.

CARRIERE: You’ll get them on a gurney, get them into the unit, begin eradicating their clothes and put ice packs wherever relevant to attempt to cool them down.

HAWKINS: When you’re loaded into the ambulance, it is a race to the emergency room. You would possibly find yourself at College Medical Heart, the town’s largest hospital, and be handled by Dr. Jeffrey Elder.

JEFFREY ELDER: So then when the affected person finally ends up on the hospital, we’ll proceed that cooling course of.

HAWKINS: Elder is the emergency room director right here. And he says getting your core temperature down as quickly as attainable is the very best precedence, in order that they’ll basically bury you in ice. In different elements of the nation, medical doctors really put sufferers inside physique baggage full of kilos of ice. Elder says they do not use physique baggage in his ER, however they do maintain baggage of ice able to go.

ELDER: Usually, what we’ll really do is on the stretcher, we’ll type of use a number of the sheets as type of a barrier. And whereas they’re on the stretcher, we’ll simply put the ice on them proper then and there.

HAWKINS: They may even cowl the affected person with free ice and level misting followers on the stretcher. Elder says his hospital has been treating extra heat-related sickness than ever earlier than, and some sufferers have died from the warmth. And New Orleans is not alone. Claudia Brown is a scientist with the Nationwide Heart for Environmental Well being on the CDC.

CLAUDIA BROWN: So excessive summer season warmth is growing in the US, and local weather projections are indicating that excessive warmth occasions might be extra frequent and intense within the coming a long time.

HAWKINS: With temperatures anticipated to proceed to achieve harmful ranges this summer season and sooner or later, well being infrastructure might want to sustain.

For NPR Information, I am Drew Hawkins in New Orleans.

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