UCSF helps Navajo tribe fight virus
UCSF sent 21 health care workers — seven doctors and 14 nurses – Wednesday to treat patients in the Navajo Nation, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus. UCSFtrained doctors working on the largest Native American reservation in the U.S. asked San Francisco colleagues for help as the outbreak strains the health care system.
Navajo Nation, where around 175,000 people live spread over 27,500 square miles in
New Mexico and Arizona, has recorded 1,206 COVID19 cases and 48 deaths. By comparison, San Francisco, which has a population eight times as large in a much smaller area, had only 21 deaths as of Thursday afternoon.
“COVID19 is tearing across the fault lines of existing injustice and structural marginalization and has hit Navajo Nation at a rate higher than 48 states,” Dr. Sriram Shamasunder, an associate professor of medicine at UCSF who is leading the volunteer group, said in a statement. “COVID19 has shown us that we are bound together, all of us.”
UCSF’s health care workers, who will be paid but volunteered for the monthlong assignment, specialize in critical care, intensive care, acute care and hospital medicine. They will work in hospitals in Chinle, Ariz., and Gallup and Shiprock, N.M., three of the highestvolume hospitals serving Navajo patients.
The effort is coordinated by the UCSF Department of Medicine’s HEAL (Health, Equity, Action and Leadership) Initiative, a twoyear fellowship program founded by Dr. Shamasunder to train medical professionals to work with disadvantaged rural communities around the world. Nearly 50 current or graduated fellows are working on the reservation; half of them are Navajo.
This effort isn’t the first time UCSF has sent volunteers to hardhit areas. Earlier this month, 20 volunteer health care workers went to New York City.