Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


COVID-19 Challenges US Rural Health Care Providers

Kane Farabaugh

   PEORIA, ILLINOIS - Late one March morning, cell phones across Illinois
   activated simultaneously through the state's emergency warning system,
   buzzing with the urgent text message:

   "State needs licensed health care workers to sign up at
   IllinoisHelps.net to fight COVID-19."

   The warning came as the number of known coronavirus cases in Illinois
   soared, many in Chicago and the urban areas surrounding it, while the
   city's sprawling McCormick Place convention center along Lake Michigan
   was transformed into a temporary medical facility to handle the influx
   of patients.

   But outside Chicago, the nation's third-largest city, among vast corn
   and soybean fields, smaller towns dot rural areas where concerns are
   growing about the relentless spread of the coronavirus, and physicians
   are sounding the alarm about what they need to fight it.

   "I think right now, critically, it's people '¦ it's the protective
   equipment, the masks, and it's prayers," said Dr. Stephen Hippler. "We
   have an undersupply of testing kits, so we don't always know who has
   coronavirus and who doesn't, and we are facing a shortage of personal
   protective equipment, which really adds to the anxiety of this."

   Hippler is a chief clinical officer for OSF HealthCare, owned and
   operated by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis,
   headquartered in Peoria, Illinois.OSF HealthCare serves patients in
   small cities and rural markets in Illinois and Michigan through 14
   hospitals with a total of 2,192 acute care beds. It also operates 30
   urgent care locations.

.