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‘Menu of neglect’: preventative care hits cliff as US health resources diverted to fight Covid


Health resources diverted to fight the COVID-19 pandemic have caused a major drop in critical preventative care in the US, including childhood vaccinations and lead screenings, sexually transmitted disease testing and substance abuse services.

In short, many of the routine measures meant to keep Americans healthy – and keep American health from slipping further behind that of other developed, peer nations – have hit a worrying cliff.

As attention has focused on the immediate crisis of the pandemic and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in America, this other hidden crisis represents another layer of disaster that also has profound implications.

“This is either the second or first worst pandemic in modern human history,” said Dr Howard Markel, a pandemic historian and pediatrician at the University of Michigan. “We knew there would be repercussions and unintended consequences.”

Now, there is a “whole menu of neglect” to address as a national vaccine campaign allows people to slowly emerge from a year of lockdowns and social distancing. “There is no historical precedent for this,” added Markel.

In the first few months of the pandemic alone, at least 400,000 children missed screenings for lead, a toxic heavy metal. Doctors and nurses ordered 3m fewer vaccines for children and 400,000 fewer for measles specifically.

For the first time, clinics were forced to ration lab tests for sexually transmitted diseases as lab capacity and supplies were diverted to test for COVID-19. Contact tracers were also re-deployed from tracking chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis cases to finding people in contact with COVID-19 patients.

Data from one large commercial lab showed 669,000 fewer HIV tests were processed. Compared to 2019, the lab diagnosed nearly 5,000 fewer cases of HIV. Delayed diagnosis can lead to people unwittingly transmitting the virus.

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Source: The Guardian, 26 April 2021

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