Month: February 2012

Measles: coming to a town near you?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update (2/15) for your information:  A reader has sent us this very interesting video of a doctor telling us about all of the deadly diseases entering the US with immigrants.

Drudge has a story posted this morning about how tens of thousands of Super Bowl tourists may have been exposed to a virulent case of measles.   Officials aren’t telling us who exactly the infected person,or persons, are. Here is the notice from the Hamilton County,Indiana Health Department.

Then here (at Medscape Today) is a very helpful review of the reemergence of the potentially fatal disease in Europe and in the United States.

From Medscape Today:

Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases in humans. It is a major contributor to child mortality worldwide and kills approximately 1-3 of every 1000 infected individuals, even in developed countries.[1] An effective vaccine was introduced in the 1960s, and along with global prioritization of measles control initiatives, this advance has significantly reduced the burden of disease. In 1997, 36 million cases and more than 1 million deaths occurred worldwide, but measles now accounts for an estimated 164,000 deaths per year globally. Endemic transmission was declared to be eliminated in the United States and the Americas in 2000.[2-4]

This was promising news, yet today, measles is reemerging as a public health threat. As of August 26, 2011, 198 cases and 15 outbreaks of measles were reported in the United States, the largest number of cases seen in this country since 1996.[5-7] In Europe, outbreaks have been ongoing in 36 of the 53 World Health Organization (WHO) European member countries, resulting in almost 30,000 cases in 2011. Measles is now considered endemic in the United Kingdom after being reportedly eliminated as of 1995.[8-10] In Africa, the number of cases increased from 36,000 in 2009 to 172,824 in 2010, and outbreaks were reported in countries with successful measles control programs.[3] Even in countries with widespread vaccine availability and a well-established public health infrastructure, sustaining measles control has become a growing challenge.

The Measles Revival

The reemergence of measles is the result of the confluence of 3 factors:

* High transmissibility of the measles virus;
* Increasing rates of vaccine refusal; and
* Globalization.

Expanding on that last point—globalization—Medscape says this (emphasis mine):

Recent outbreaks also illustrate the effects of globalization. Measles remains endemic in many countries, including many European countries, making exposure a real possibility for susceptible travelers or visitors. In the United States, 89% of measles cases were imported by returning travelers or recent immigrants.[22-24]

If your city or town is a “welcoming” community for refugees, you might want to make sure they are all being vaccinated. They should have been immunized before entering the US.

Indianapolis is a big refugee resettlement site as is Fort Wayne, IN which we learned about in 2007 when it was having problems with TB.

Lugar Refugee Study

All this reminds me, whatever happened to Indiana Senator Richard Lugar’s 2010 investigation of the refugee overload in his state, here.  Did it disappear into one of those Washington, DC black holes?

If the subject of immigrant health interests you, we have an entire category, built over nearly 5 years of posting, which holds 123 posts at this time on the topic.

Israel building border fences, detention facilities

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As we have written in previous posts (archive here), Israel is struggling with large flows of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers largely from Africa.  Fearing the lose of their country, they are taking action.

From Breitbart:

Israeli planning authorities on Tuesday approved construction of a detention centre for illegal immigrants, at a projected cost of 250 million shekels ($67 million, 51 million euros), the defence ministry said.

The formal authorisation follows a November 2010 cabinet decision to build a facility for mostly African migrants smuggled across Israel’s borders but who for legal reasons cannot immediately be deported to their countries.

[….]

Israel is erecting a giant security barrier along its 240-kilometre (150 miles) border with Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and plans to put up a similar structure along its 238 kilometre (148 miles) frontier with Jordan.

Work on the Egypt barrier began a year ago, in a project initially aimed at stemming a growing tide of African migrants, as well as clamping down on cross-border trafficking in drugs and women.

Before you liberals get all worked up about an Israeli border fence keep in mind that the Saudis were way ahead of them with a state of the art border fence of their own (LOL! the Saudis want to keep those African Muslims out and aren’t shy about saying so!).

British security agency: They’ll be baaack!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are referring to the scores of Somali former refugees who grew up in the West (in Britain and the US) and have returned to Africa for Jihad training with Al-Shabaab.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A NEW wave of battle-hardened ”lone wolf” terrorists is expected to infiltrate Britain and the US from African and other war zones to carry out attacks, according to security experts.

British and American Somalis currently fighting alongside Islamist rebels in Somalia are expected to pose a serious threat upon their return from Africa, training others in the techniques they learnt on the battlefield and in terrorist training camps.

”It is only a question of time before their commitment to the cause, and their newly acquired expertise, are likely to be seen on British streets,” says the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defence think tank.

RUSI, in a report titled The Global Origins of New Terrorism, says about 50 fighters with the Islamist group al-Shabab, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, are from Britain.

They say the new terror threat will also come from Islamist fighters returning from wars in Yemen and Nigeria, and from the renewed violence in Iraq.

The predictions are echoed by the controversial chairman of the US House committee on homeland security, congressman Peter King, who has warned of the threat to the US from an estimated 50 American Somalis fighting with al-Shabab.

That number (50) is a lot higher then we’ve seen before, but then since the media first got wind of all this back in 2008, our homeland security people might be staying mum now not wanting to scare the public.

The story goes on, here.  Note that King mentions a study which concludes that 80-85% of US mosques are radicalized.

Ukraine: Somalis on hunger strike, demand asylum

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

They are transiting the Ukraine and other countries that surround the European Union in hopes of getting across borders into countries like Germany where they stand a better chance of being granted asylum.

Franck Duvell:

Since 6 January, 58 Somalis, all from the Mogadishu region (13 women, including 7 minors, and 45 men, including 17 minors) who are detained in Zhuravychi detention centre near Lutsk are on hunger strike. On 29/1, they were subsequently attacked by riot police who forcefully took them to the dining room to take pictures of the refugees eating.

The hunger striking refugees demand that:

1) Somali asylum seekers are granted asylum status in Ukraine.
2) They are released from detention.
3) Asylum seekers are provided with documents so they cannot be arrested.
4) There is an end to the police harassment of asylum seekers.
5) No asylum seeker is to face re-arrest after a period of detention.

The detention centre where the Somali and other refugees are kept was set up in 2008 with funds from the EU, € 7.2 million from the ‘Capacity Building in Migration Management’ programme (CBMM), and under IOM management. Another ten EU-funded detention centres are planned.

Ukraine not safe for refugees:

It has been widely and internationally agreed by UNHCR, IOM, ICMPD and others that Ukraine does not live up to its obligations under international law and is thus not a safe country for refugees.

Somalis transit Ukraine attempting to get to the EU where their chances of being granted asylum improve:

For several years, Somalis have been using Ukraine as a transit route from Somalia via Russia to the EU, not in large numbers but a few hundred each year. Once in the EU, they try and continue they journeys to the western countries. There, they usually apply for asylum knowing that it is only there that they stand a chance of being recognised. For instance, in Germany, in 2010, 2,466 Somalis had applied for asylum, around 5 percent of the total. The recognition rate for Somalis was 41.4 percent, three times more than the national average…

In Ukraine people with “exotic” appearances are detained—guess those Ukrainians didn’t hear that ethnic profiling is politically incorrect:

In 2010 and 2011, Ukrainian authorities are reported to rounding up migrants, in Kyiv they ‘harass merchants at Troyeshchyna market; racism, corruption seen’ notably of ‘non-Slavik appearance’ (Kyiv Post, 5/11/2010) and in Kharkiv they ‘carry out raids at the markets and railway stations of the city. People with exotic appearance are checked their documents and established whether they stay in Ukraine legally.’

Mass murderer tells court he was trying to stop “Islamic colonization of Norway”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The last I heard about Anders Behring Breivik was that he had been determined to be insane and would not be tried in a court of law, but according to this story published in an Illinois newspaper it looks like he will get his day in court after all.  I’m sure the authorities were hoping that with an insanity diagnosis they could avoid the public trial—guess not.

From the Star Courier:

OSLO, Norway —

The right-wing extremist who has admitted killing 77 people in the worst peacetime massacre that Norway has ever seen told a court Monday that he deserved a medal of honor for the bloodshed and demanded to be set free.

Anders Behring Breivik smirked as he was led in to the Oslo district court, handcuffed and dressed in a dark suit, for his last scheduled detention hearing before the trial starts in April. He stretched out his arms in what his lawyer Geir Lippestad said was “some kind of right-wing extremist greeting.”

Reading from prepared remarks, the 32-year-old Norwegian told the court that the July 22 massacre — carried out with a bomb, a rifle and a handgun — was a strike against “traitors” he said are embracing immigration to promote “an Islamic colonization of Norway.”