The horrible disease of Dysentery is on the rise in the city of Portland, Oregon. How gross.

You can probably draw a straight line between this and the city’s large homeless population and the practice of using city streets as a public restroom.

It’s an important reminder that homelessness is a multi-faceted issue, and one of the things it affects is public health.

KOIN News reports:

Dysentery cases rise in Portland metro area, health department reports

Dysentery is on the rise in the Portland metro area, according to recent data released by the Multnomah County Health Department.

Also known as shigellosis, dysentery is a highly contagious bacterial disease that can cause fever, cramps, vomiting and diarrhea. It is spread very easily from person to person when someone gets fecal matter from an infected person into their mouth, health officials say.

According to the health department, two types of Shigella typically circulate in Oregon. Although both strains can cause severe diarrhea, officials are not seeing the strain which can cause more severe or fatal illness. However, they note the strains circulating in Multnomah County are resistant to several antibiotics.

Shigella cases have been rising in Multnomah County since 2012, officials said. But health department data on dysentery cases collected by the county from 2017-2024 shows a marked increase in the number of cases between 2023 and 2024. Further, January 2025 showed 40 cases reported.

The report goes on to state that almost 60 percent of recent cases are connected to the homeless population.

You can see the spike in recent cases in the chart below.

For its next trick, Multnomah County, Oregon is rebooting dysentery. pic.twitter.com/ntz7j4HzIU

— Jeff Eager (@Jeff_Eager) February 27, 2025

It doesn’t have to be this way and it’s amazing that the taxpayers of Portland put up with it. There are Third World countries that do a better job preventing the spread of common diseases.