At Bentalou Elementary School in Baltimore, seven asthmatic children without insurance will not get treatment today.
On Tuesday night, vandals broke into a fenced lot off Snowden River Parkway in Howard County and damaged the Breathe Bus, a mobile medical treatment vehicle that visits schools in and around Baltimore offering free screening testing and medicine to thousands of children ages 2 to 18.
Vandals threw syringes and medicines around the vehicle and ripped out computer monitors that had been bolted into the countertops, said Rebecca Ceraul, spokeswoman for the University of Maryland School of Medicine which funds the bus. There was no word on whether any medications were missing, nor any estimate on cost of the damage.
“It looks also like other vehicles were broken into,” said Sherry Llewellyn, spokeswoman for the Howard County police. “There was no information on whether anything was stolen out of those vehicles.”
The impact on the Breathe program was profound, Michelle Foster, director of the Breathe Bus program said. “They?ve just affected hundreds of kids in Baltimore City alone. These are the uninsured, the underinsured and the underpriveleged. We don?t turn anyone away,” Foster said.
