All About Hepatitis A, the Reason San Diego Bleaches the Streets
In San Diego, 16 people have died from hepatitis A in the past few months and more than 400 have contracted the disease . Hepatitis A is a virus that infects the liver and spreads quite easily under certain circumstances. Here’s what you need to know.
What are the symptoms of hepatitis A?
Some people do not have symptoms, but those who do have symptoms at first may look like food poisoning: nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and abdominal pain. You may also have a fever.
Since the disease affects the liver, you may have other strange symptoms such as dark urine, pale stools, or possibly jaundice, which means yellowing of the eyes or skin.
Obviously, if you have any of these symptoms or are worried about your health, seek medical attention.
Symptoms can last for weeks or months and appear several weeks after exposure to the virus. Fortunately, people rarely die from hepatitis A, especially if they were initially healthy. You may have relapses in the next six to nine months, but once you fully recover, it’s clear that people who have had hepatitis A do not develop chronic liver disease and usually cannot get infected again.
How do people get hepatitis A?
In most cases, the same as with a stomach disease : by the fecal-oral route. The virus is carried from the intestines of an infected person into your mouth. It sounds disgusting, but it can happen without your knowledge. As San Diego County Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten explained to CNN :
“Basically, if a person is infected with hepatitis A and they use the bathroom and don’t wash their hands, they can spread [it] or pollute the environment: doorknobs, ATM machines, or whatever they touch,” Wooten said. Other people who touch the same objects and do not wash their hands before eating, smoking, or touching the face can also become infected.
Hepatitis A is rare in areas with good sanitation, but spreads like wildfire elsewhere. The San Diego problem stems from a dense population of homeless people and a lack of public toilets. People have nowhere to go (in any sense) other than the street, so virus-contaminated waste moves easily. In this case, homeless people are also more likely to be exposed to the virus, and they usually do not have reliable access to health care.
Since 2000, a civilian commission has recommended four times that San Diego install public toilets to keep human waste from spilling onto the streets. Finally, they provide some of them , as well as handwashing stations and a program to try to vaccinate as many people at risk as possible.
Can I protect myself?
Wash your damn hands first . If you want to be hermaphobic in public and not touch the doorknobs or anything like that, I wouldn’t blame you (especially if you live or work in downtown San Diego or other flashy areas).
There is a vaccine against hepatitis A. Recommended for all children over 12 months of age and people from certain risk groups. This is you if you use illegal drugs, if you are a man who has sex with men, if you have liver or blood clotting disease, or if your travel or work may bring you into contact with people with hepatitis A.
During these outbreaks, San Diego provides vaccines to people at risk , including all homeless people or those working with homeless populations. You can find a list of San Diego Immunization Centers here or by calling 211. If you live elsewhere and want the vaccine, check with your doctor or local clinics; wherever you can get other vaccines, you can probably get this one too.
Update from 9/21/17 at 11:52 AM ET: We have updated the statement on who should get the hepatitis A vaccine.