The infection is tough to diagnose, leading to an undercount of cases and delayed treatment
By Kaitlin Washburn @kwashy12
CENTRAL VALLEY – Dr. Royce Johnson is one of the go-to doctors for valley fever. He has been treating people with the infection, which can be fatal and is endemic to the Central Valley, for decades. As the medical director of the Valley Fever Institute, he sees thousands of patients infected with valley fever, and he feels it should be a lot less.
“There is a lesser knowledge and misunderstanding of how big and severe the problem is and the impact on the population where you and I live,” Johnson said. “This is a major national health problem.” While Johnson said the Institute recently received more attention and funding from the state and federal levels, he said lawmakers should have been taking valley fever seriously long ago.
“We’ve been doing research steadily over the years. But it’s always been on a shoestring,” Johnson said. “We never really had any support on this. I’ve had to do other research that paid me money so that I could do the research on valley fever.”
While valley fever is nothing new for the San Joaquin Valley, infection cases continue to rise. Health care professionals and activists say the care and resources for those afflicted fall short. This shortcoming acutely impacts farm workers, who risk contracting valley fever on the job and often don’t have access to health care.
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