64 cases of typhus have been reported to the Los Angeles County Health Department this year. Last year there were a total of 67 cases. Both figures are unusually high, twice as high as the average number of registered cases in previous years, the agency said. Most of the sufferers are homeless.

According to official statistics, LA's urban area is home to more than 30,000 people without permanent residence. Many of them camp in tents under bridges or along expressways and railways. They have little access to toilets and washrooms.

After hepatitis outbreak follows now typhus fever

In the past year, Los Angeles has been struggling with another wave of homelessness. At that time, hepatitis A spread in California, hundreds of people in the state infected, 21 died.

Fortunately, the now-spreading typhus fever infection is a mild form, which only rarely ends in fatal cases and can not be transmitted from person to person. The infection takes place via fleas, which can be found, for example, in the coat of rats, possums and street cats.

It takes about one to two weeks from the infection to the onset of the disease. Symptoms include sudden fever, headache, chills, more rarely vomiting and rash. In severe cases, damage to the kidneys, the respiratory tract, the heart or the nervous system can occur.

Both hepatitis A and typhus are regarded as largely eradicated in western industrialized nations. Both diseases are associated with poor hygiene and extreme poverty, especially in developing countries.

How Los Angeles is going against the disease

"As I drive through my district, I feel in some places reminiscent of living conditions in a Third World country," Kathryn Barger, board member of Los Angeles County, laments at a council meeting last Tuesday.

Barger had been working at the beginning of the year to improve the hygienic conditions for homeless people in Los Angeles and the surrounding countryside. In view of the increased rate of infection with typhus fever, she appears disillusioned. "We provide mobile showers, but they simply do not use them, but continue to live under these dirty circumstances."

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Poverty in the US: without shelter

The situation is worrying, not only for the homeless themselves, but also for the residents of the affected districts, the board said. In the Council meeting, an action plan against typhus was therefore adopted: The city distributes insect repellent to homeless people, as well as flea collars for their pets. In addition, 300,000 US dollars will be spent to clean their tent cities and the environment.

Get people off the street

The fact that so many people live in Los Angeles on the street, is mainly due to the horrendous rents, affordable housing is becoming increasingly scarce. The regional administration responded only recently and launched a million-dollar financing package, which among other things temporary housing for the homeless should be built. The implementation of the construction projects is progressing only slowly, so far only one of ten planned homes has been completed.

Editor's note: In an earlier version of the text we wrote about a typhoid outbreak. In fact, however, it is typhus, which in English is translated as "typhus". We have corrected the corresponding places.