Lava
Mae October 23, 2014 -- Today I volunteered with the Lava Mae team and their shower bus. The name is a play on the Spanish words for "wash me". San Francisco donated an obsolete-but-serviceable city bus and Lava Mae fundraised the $75,000 it cost to convert it to a pair of showers on wheels. Three days a week, the bus is parked in places where homeless people congregate. For many, it provides a rare opportunity to get cleaned up and feel human again. During the course of a five-hour shift, 40 or 50 people shower -- privacy, lots of hot water, castille soap, fresh towels, and friendly folks. Sometimes the streets of San Francisco are not so harsh after all. |
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Dan Keller's Nursing, Health Policy & Healthcare Technology Blog
Nursing Informatics · Clinical Perspectives · Healthcare Systems
"The United States alone [among wealthy countries] treats health care as a commodity to be distributed according to the ability to pay rather than a social service to be distributed according to medical need." — JAMA (2003), 290, 798