{"id":116397,"date":"2020-11-19T20:07:52","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T17:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/nursing-home-neglect-deaths-surge-in-shadows\/"},"modified":"2020-11-19T20:07:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T17:07:52","slug":"nursing-home-neglect-deaths-surge-in-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nursing-home-neglect-deaths-surge-in-shadows\/","title":{"rendered":"#Nursing home neglect deaths surge in shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Nursing home neglect deaths surge in shadows<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n When COVID-19 tore through Donald Wallace\u2019s nursing home, he was one of the lucky few to avoid infection.<\/p>\n

He died a horrible death anyway.<\/p>\n

Hale and happ<\/a>y before the pandemic, the 75-year-old retired Alabama truck driver became so malnourished and dehydrated that he dropped to 98 pounds and looked to his son like he\u2019d been in a concentration camp. Septic shock suggested an untreated urinary infection, E. coli in his body from his own feces hinted at poor hygiene and aspiration pneumonia indicated Wallace, who needed help with meals, had likely choked on his food.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe couldn\u2019t even hold his head up straight because he had gotten so weak,\u201d said his son, Kevin Amerson. \u201cThey stopped taking care of him. They abandoned him.\u201d<\/p>\n

As more than 90,000 of the nation\u2019s long-term care residents have died in a pandemic that has pushed staffs to the limit, advocates for the elderly say a tandem wave of death separate from the virus has quietly claimed tens of thousands more, often because overburdened workers haven\u2019t been able to give them the care they need.<\/p>\n

Nursing home watchdogs are being flooded with reports of residents kept in soiled diapers so long their skin peeled off, left with bedsores that cut to the bone and allowed to wither away in starvation or thirst.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, interviews with dozens of people across the country reveal swelling numbers of less clear-cut deaths that doctors believe have been fueled not by neglect but by a mental state plunged into despair by prolonged isolation \u0336 listed on some death certificates as \u201cfailure to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

A nursing home expert who analyzed data from the country\u2019s 15,000 facilities for The Associated Press estimates that for every two COVID-19 victims in long-term care, there is another who died prematurely of other causes. Those \u201cexcess deaths\u201d beyond the normal rate of fatalities in nursing homes could total more than 40,000 since March.<\/p>\n

These extra deaths are roughly 15 percent more than you\u2019d expect at nursing homes already facing tens of thousands of deaths each month in a normal year.<\/p>\n