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An armful of free vaccines will probably be accessible Saturday at La Villita Park, the place attendees can also get data on public well being, immigration — and perhaps even organized to have a free tree planted in entrance of their home.
The workplace of Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (twenty fifth) is organizing the occasion together with neighborhood teams from the Close to Southwest Facet and the Individuals’s Response Community, a grassroots group devoted to public well being.
The honest will probably be from 10 a.m. to three p.m. on the park’s north entrance, close to Whipple and twenty seventh streets in Little Village. No registration is important.
Vaccines for COVID-19, flu and monkeypox will probably be accessible, as will a slew of kid vaccines, together with polio and whooping cough, which cropped up in Oak Park in 2020.
Organizations will distribute free house testing kits for COVID; provide ideas for saving cash on utilities; share data on bilingual faculties; and even register individuals to get a free tree planted at their house as a part of the town’s “Our Roots Chicago” initiative to plant 75,000 trees within the subsequent 5 years.
Ald. Bryon Sigcho-Lopez, talking at a information convention in April outdoors St. Agnes of Bohemia Fitness center, 2643 S. Central Park, in Little Village.
Anthony Vazquez/Solar-Occasions
Sigcho-Lopez and public well being advocates have slammed the town’s response to the COVID-19 disaster, saying the pandemic just isn’t over and the town drastically must broaden its public well being providers.
Within the final month, round 12,000 individuals have died within the U.S. from COVID, in response to knowledge from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention; and organizers of the occasion bristled that masking and testing aren’t required, regardless that about 5,400 Chicago Public Faculties college students and employees have contracted the virus since returning to varsities, in response to CPS knowledge.
The park in Little Village was chosen for its symbolic significance. South Lawndale, which incorporates Little Village, was certainly one of Chicago’s most affected areas, in response to the town’s COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index.
“The aim of this honest could be very easy: All these organizations are doing what the town must be doing,” mentioned Dr. Howard Ehrman, an organizer of the Individuals’s Response Community and former assistant commissioner of the Chicago Division of Public Well being. Ehrman has been a vocal critic of the town’s pandemic response and the company he used to work for.
The general public well being division didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Ehrman, who served within the well being division throughout Mayor Harold Washington’s administration, criticized how the division has shrunk within the many years since then, saying that whereas the town has acquired billions in federal coronavirus assist, that money has gone to contractors as an alternative of build up the general public well being division.
“Town isn’t any higher ready for the subsequent pandemic — whether or not it’s monkeypox, polio or anything,” he mentioned.
He mentioned the town well being division employed simply seven new nurses after receiving $626 million from the U.S. Facilities from Illness Management and Prevention and known as on the town to put in nurses in faculties, recalling how he was vaccinated at his South Shore elementary college alongside his classmates.
“Now they’re asking dad and mom who’re working two or three jobs to seek out the time to take their youngsters to get vaccinated,” he mentioned.
A spokesman for the town well being division had no quick touch upon these assertions Thursday.
Michael Loria is a employees reporter on the Chicago Solar-Occasions through Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that goals to bolster the paper’s protection of communities on the South and West sides.
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