The other day we reported that refugees were being screened more seriously abroad and treated before setting foot on US soil (or that is what we are told anyway).
Here is yet another article on tuberculosis—Hispanics and Asians have the highest rates of TB in America.
The article goes on to say how much this is going to cost us (the taxpayers!) going forward.
From voxxi.com:
Though the rate of tuberculosis (TB) in the United States is dropping, among certain racial and ethnic groups that is not the case. According to recent data, immigrants and those who travel to other countries frequently have the highest TB occurrence.
This means Hispanics, Asians, African Americans, and non-Hispanic whites born outside of the United States carry the largest TB burden in the country.
The issues stems from high rates of tuberculosis around the globe, with the highest incidence reports coming from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. According to the World Health Organization, many of these cases–approximately 450,000–are the drug-resistant form of TB that has developed from improper medication usage and medical protocols.
Not only do we have ‘asylum seekers’ from Mexico, but the largest group of OTMs are Chinese and Indians. Are they being tested the minute they come across the border? I sure hope we are protecting our border guards!
In the United States, foreign-born individuals had a 13 times greater TB incidence than US-born persons and accounted for 64.6 percent of TB cases in 2013. Of these, more than half originated from one of five countries: Mexico (20 percent), The Philippines (12.6 percent), India (8 percent), Vietnam (7.4 percent), and China (6.1 percent).
Almost all of the drug-resistant TB in the US is among the foreign born!
The rate of tuberculosis among immigrant populations varies slightly from the country of origin, however. Among Asians in the U.S. who are foreign-born, there is a 95 percent rate of TB infection, compared to 75 percent of Hispanics, 40 percent of African Americans, and 23 percent of non-Hispanic whites born outside the United States. Foreign-born persons also accounted for 88.4 percent of the resistant TB cases reported in 2012.
Then this struck me as very funny—minority populations will have to be concerned with the cost of treatment going forward! What the heck! It is the US taxpayer that will have to bear the cost of treatment!
The latest data, presented through several Centers for Disease Control (CDC) studies, suggests there is a major dilemma minority populations in the U.S. will soon have to face; cost of treatment.
[….]
Marks suggests TB treatment on average can cost around $17,000; however, drug-resistant TB is another matter, costing approximately $134,000 (rising to $430,000 for extensively resistant TB ). Adding productivity losses to treatment costs brought the estimated per case cost for treating drug-resistant TB to $554,000 per case.
See our ‘health issues’ category with 206 previous posts on health issues involving refugees and immigrants.