Faculty, staff, and students at SIU's School of Medicine are on the front lines fighting COVID-19. Dean Jerry Kruse says researchers are volunteering to help in testing labs, students are helping to care for the children of front-line healthcare workers, and dozens of others are stepping up to do what they can.
Kruse says the wave of patients is growing, and that SIU's network of physicians and other healthcare professionals are rising to the task.
"I'm so glad we're a community-based medical school right now, because the partnerships that we've developed over time have allowed a system to be built - to allow rural Illinois, where the small urban centers are, to really get ready for the upswing and the surge in this pandemic."
Kruse says some medical students are not able to help as much as they'd like - because of federal rules that dictate what they're allowed to do. But he says they're getting valuable experience observing the COVID-19 outbreak.
