Most of the concerns expressed so far about Victoria’s tent city have focused on violence and the threat to public order. It’s also possible that a court injunction will be ordered, clearing the site on fire-safety grounds.
But there is another aspect of this predicament that has been largely ignored — the risk of disease. Shanty towns frequently become home to a variety of infectious disorders.
All the ingredients are there: large numbers of people living close together in cramped surroundings, poor sanitary conditions, unsafe food handing, drug paraphernalia and, about to arrive, the hottest months of summer.
Back in the 1960s, we saw a prequel in the hippie communes of the day. Most often the dominant disease outbreaks were sexually transmitted — syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes and so on — that being the the era of “free love.”
But records from the period also show a spike in respiratory ailments such as strep throat and bronchitis.
So what might a serious outbreak look like here? E. coli, often spread by poor hygiene in the handling of food, is a very real possibility.
Outbreaks of hepatitis A and C are also conceivable. The latter, if it occurred, might remain confined at the site, since it is transmitted primarily by sexual contact or contaminated needles.
Hepatitis A, though, is another matter. While it is often spread by eating contaminated food, it can also be passed on by mere close contact with an infected person. That is to say, it has the means to expand into the surrounding neighbourhood.
Now I can imagine someone saying: “Well just a moment, there are only a few hundred cases of hepatitis A Canada-wide each year. Why worry?” The reason, of course, is that shanty towns are not our national norm.
The public-health officials I spoke with thought it extremely unlikely we would see a full-scale disaster, such as typhoid or cholera. These are also associated with the crowded and unsanitary arrangements reported at the site.
But usually much larger volumes of people are needed to trigger these diseases.
And staff from Island Health are keeping an eye on things, to watch for any sign of trouble.
Still, it cannot be denied that permitting a tent city to grow amidst such primitive conditions is giving hostages to fortune.
The argument to date has been that permitting people to camp next to the courthouse can be justified by a lack of accommodation elsewhere. And if the issue were merely housing, perhaps that might make sense.
But a roof over your head is only one of the human necessities. Health and protection from disease are also important.
I understand the humane motives that underlie this project. And I suppose it might be suggested that living in a doorway or under a park bench is no greater a threat to well-being, and that is the alternative many homeless people face. But do those who countenance such a solution understand its dangers?
Tent cities invite disease on an order of magnitude far greater than exists otherwise.
Basically, they defy every rule of public health the last two centuries have taught us.
And taught us the hard way. Most of Europe’s older cities have cemeteries filled with poor souls whose civic leaders didn’t learn these lessons.
Of course, it’s comforting to think nothing bad will happen here. Or if it did, our first-rate health-care system would soon extinguish the outbreak.
And so it would. Eventually. But what happens in the meantime?
All of this is in the future, of course, and hence unknowable. Maybe we’ll get lucky.
Yet chances are, before summer is out, something nasty will rear its head. Officials in positions of authority, whether judges, city councillors or provincial ministers, have no business running such risks.
