Status: 11.01.2021 8:44 p.m.
In the first few days of this year, five homeless people died in Hamburg – there are around 2,000 in the city according to the welfare authorities. Help is offered, for example, by the cold bus run by the “Alimaus” organization run by the St. Ansgar association.
Four degrees, drizzle. Ronald Kelm, nurse and Niklas Berger, general practitioner, are on the road through the night in Hamburg with the cold bus. Unsalaried. “We see people on the street who are increasingly impoverished,” says Kelm. The homeless would have lost many sources of income due to the corona pandemic.
A burden for the team
The warm things, the cost of the bus: everything financed by donations. The greatest danger for the homeless today is not the cold, but the moisture. A heavily drunk man sits in a passage at the main train station. He is hardly responsive, his pants are wet. Without help it could have been a life-threatening night for him. “The moisture removes body heat, and that too quickly,” says Kelm. The man urgently needs to go to the winter emergency program, the helpers said. They want to help everyone out there, but that doesn’t always work. “It’s a burden for everyone in the team,” says Kelm. In the evening he was already wondering whether he had missed someone.
Shock because of the dead
The bus can be reached every evening in winter. The tour almost always leads to the main train station. Another homeless man they encounter had surgery in the hospital but was quickly released. He needs medication. The right ones have to be found first. The five dead in such a short time, they are the subject of these days among the volunteers. “That the number is so high is shocking and frightening. The question must be asked whether this help system is still appropriate,” says Kelm.
Harter Corona-Winter
Then they take care of a man who has drunk so much that he better spends the night in the winter emergency program. He would not have made it to Friesenstrasse alone. In these extreme situations, of course, the team also has to pay attention to hygiene, and constantly ventilate and disinfect the bus. Winter on the street is even harder in Corona times. The cold bus volunteers try to alleviate the misery a little every night.
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