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- Title
The Burden of Treatment Among Delhi’s Homeless: An Analysis of Street Medicine Consultations.
- Authors
Selby Coleman, Harry Laurence; Tattersall, Tessa Lawson; Alkazi, Armaan Mullick; Bunders, Joske; Syurina, Elena; Agyemang, Charles; Mander, Harsh
- Abstract
Background: The health challenges faced by the homeless are widely unaccounted for in the global south. In India, the lack of a primary healthcare sector in urban areas has led informal healthcare providers, such as Street Medicine, to step in. Methods: By compiling data collected by the Centre for Equity Studies’ Street Medicine teams from June 2016 to October 2018 (n =16,635), this study provides the first empirical assessment of the homeless disease burden in a global south country, while limited to only the people experiencing homelessness that the teams treat, hence being a burden of treatment. Our analysis quantifies this burden among those who seek care from Street Medicine teams and identifies variations in this burden’s distribution across demography and time. Results: The majority (n = 13,557; 81.5%) of Street Medicine cases can be attributed to 19 diagnoses or symptoms, which are mostly therapeuticallysimple conditions. The distribution of disease seems to be affected by different configurations of three characteristics: demographics (age and sex), urban geography (where homeless reside), and season. Conclusion: The Street Medicine teams must reflect on the balance they wish to achieve by addressing the relatively common and mild conditions documented in the dataset, and more severe and established diseases within homeless communities. Rapid diagnostic tests for resource-constrained settings could be integrated into Street Medicine practice in order to strengthen the data on which resource allocation decisions are made and improve assessments of homeless disease burden.
- Subjects
DELHI (India); INDIA; HOMELESSNESS; RAPID diagnostic tests; SERVER farms (Computer network management); URBAN geography; MEDICAL personnel; HOMELESS persons
- Publication
International Journal on Homelessness, 2023, Vol 3, Issue 3, p1
- ISSN
2564-310X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5206/ijoh.2023.3.14821