Vaccine Rollout Highlights Tribal Health Programs Strengths Despite Chronic Underfunding wyomingpublicmedia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wyomingpublicmedia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Ray Levy-Uyeda
The scene is familiar: A hospital bed, a respirator, medical personnel in full PPE. But while the attending doctor is from San Francisco, California, the hospital is located 1,000 miles away, in the middle of 27,000 miles of vast, desert land.
The Navajo Nation, which spans Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, is self-governed but receives economic support from the U.S. government. However, with federal spending on health services historically low for Native, compared with non-Native populations throughout the country, the Navajo Nation has been underfunded and understaffed for years. And despite being early to impose regional curfews and having the country’s highest per capita testing rate, for most of 2020 the Nation suffered from one of the highest infection rates of COVID-19 known locally as Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19 or Big Cough-19. Home to 156,000 people, the region has already seen nearly 26,754 positive cases of COVID-19 and 1,170 deaths, a result of multiple form
31 U.S. Army North, U.S. Northern Command’s Joint Force Land Component Command, has been overseeing the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 response operations in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services since March 2020. This fact sheet reflects operations since November 2020. Approximately 560 military medical personnel are currently working, or recently worked, alongside civilian healthcare providers in civilian hospitals, helping treat COVID-19 patients in six states and the Navajo Nation as part of this whole-of-government response to the pandemic.
Texas
Current Support
In Texas, approximately 80 military medical personnel from the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, and U.S. Air Force have been supporting the state since January 29, 2021, at three hospitals in three cities: