By Mallory Moench, San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2020
UCSF sent 21 health care workers - seven doctors and 14 nurses - Wednesday to treat patients in the Navajo Nation hard-hit by the coronavirus. UCSF-trained 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 COVID-19 cases and 48 deaths. By comparison, San Francisco, which has a population eight times as large in a much smaller area, has only 21 deaths.
“COVID-19 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, associate professor of medicine at UCSF leading the volunteer group, said in a statement. “COVID-19 has shown us that we are bound together, all of us.”
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