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Los Angeles Competes for California’s Most Disgusting City as ‘Typhus Zone’ Underscores Skid Row Squalor

Rats are likely contributing to a typhus outbreak on Los Angeles' skid row, experts say, prompting the city and county to take steps to reduce the spread of diseases. PHOTO: NBC/Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty

By Tyler Durden | 19 October 2018

ZERO HEDGE — San Francisco’s poo- and needle-filled streets have competition for the state’s most squalid, as LA’s skid row — home to over 4,000 transients — is now a “typhus zone,” according to NBC News.

Situated among wholesale fish distributors and produce warehouses, skid row spans approximately 54 square blocks in downtown Los Angeles – and has become a breeding ground for rats and other vermin, which have contributed to Los Angeles County’s typhus outbreak which began this summer.

Uneaten food is dumped on the street — a salad platter was recently splattered on the asphalt — and discarded clothing piles up only to be swirled into rats’ nests.

Those rats, experts say, are likely contributing to the growing number of typhus infections cropping up on skid row and other parts of the region. The disease is spread by fleas, which are carried by rats, opossums and pets.

You have constant activity that serves as a breeding ground for rats,” said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association, a business improvement district that overlaps skid row. –NBC News

Typhus infections can cause high fever, headache, chills — and in rare or untreated cases, meningitis and death. It is contracted when the “feces from infected fleas are rubbed into cuts or scrapes in the skin or rubbed into the eyes,” according to the county health department. […]

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