Hepatitis A outbreak in Morehouse Parish

The Louisiana Department of Health says Morehouse parish is seeing a spike in Hepatitis A cases. Dr. Frank Welch, the Medical Director for the Louisiana Department of Health Immunization Program, says they’ve seen about 30 cases of the virus statewide. That’s double what they usually see each year. Dr. Welch says Morehouse Parish has seen seven cases so far.

He says the virus most commonly affects the homeless and those who use injection/non-injection drugs, and those are the two groups that Welch says could be responsible for the spike in Morehouse Parish. Dr. Welch says the outbreak in Arkansas is so bad that it’s easy to imagine it spreading into Northern Louisiana. “You can imagine that tends to be a population that's transient. And so to think that someone from Arkansas who's experiencing those symptoms, and some of these other problems could have migrated down south at some point, or who had contacts that were sort of in that area, is not that unusual to me,” says Welch.

Dr. Welch says getting the vaccination is 93% effective in preventing the virus, and it’s available for a low cost at the department’s health units around the state.