The Week in Rewind spotlights some of the editorial work of the Bronx Times for the week of July 26-Aug. 1.
‘A hostage within my apartment’: Bronxite stricken by Legionnaires’ speaks out on physical struggles, lawsuit against Doe Fund
After retiring in September as an in-office technician for Verizon, Anita Long wanted to buy a home in the southwest Bronx neighborhood she has lived in for 28 years, on the Grand Concourse just east of Highbridge and south of Mt. Eden.
But a Legionnaires’ outbreak let loose there in May, infecting 30 people, killing two and hospitalizing 28, including Long. The airborne disease, which was spread from legionella bacteria emanating from a cooling tower at 1325 Jerome Ave., upended Long’s desire to stay in the neighborhood.
After laying in the hospital for 22 days and facing an onslaught of health issues, Long decided she doesn’t want anything to do with New York.
“I love my community and I love being a voice of the people, especially people who do not have a voice … so I wanted to stay in the community,” she said in an interview, first with the Bronx Times. “But because of what happened to me, now I am afraid. I almost feel like I’m a hostage within my apartment because I’m afraid to go out.”
Jacobi Hospital’s ‘Just Home’ seeks to house formerly jailed with medical needs, but residents say ‘criminals’ not welcome
People were spilling out the doors of the event space at Maestro’s Caterers.
Hot and sweaty, shoulder to shoulder, they weren’t there for a wedding or celebratory affair. They were there for a raucous Morris Park Community Association meeting about a controversial proposal called Just Home, which would provide supportive housing to homeless New Yorkers leaving jail with what NYC Health + Hospitals has described as complex medical needs, like stage-4 cancer, end-stage renal disease and congestive heart failure.
The project would be housed in a currently unused Jacobi Hospital building at 1900 Seminole Ave., in a northern section of Morris Park known as Indian Village, which residents, who may be geriatric, non-ambulatory or require oxygen tanks or wheelchairs, would enter through the Jacobi Hospital campus.
Montefiore performed the world’s first HIV-positive to HIV-positive heart transplant, a sign of a broadening organ donor pool
Nearly 10 years after the passage of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act allowed those living with HIV to donate their organs to HIV-positive recipients, Montefiore Medical Center became the first in the world to successfully perform HIV-positive to HIV-positive heart transplants this spring.
The recipient, a woman in her sixties suffering from advanced heart failure, also needed a concurring kidney transplant. The surgery was a four-hour surgery that involved transplanting the heart first and kidney second, explained the patient’s clinician Dr. Omar Saeed told the Bronx Times.
