Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart continued his excellent series of investigative reports on the incidence of active TB in the US refugee population with this report from Virginia. Yesterday we told you about two other Leahy articles on TB in refugees earlier this week, see here.
Leahy on this Virginia revelation:
The state of Virginia refuses to track the number of refugees it resettles who are diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB).
[….]
… the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) does not think it should be a priority to track foreign-born TB cases by category, as do 44 states who have provided the CDC with that data since 2012 (Tennessee became the 45th state to do so in 2014) in its annual Report on Tuberculosis in the United States.
“The Virginia Department of Health does not collect the data you have requested,” a spokesperson for VDH responded when Breitbart asked to know the immigration status upon first entry of the 168 foreign-born residents of Virginia diagnosed with active TB in 2015.
More here.
For more on refugee health see our ‘Health issues’ category by clicking here. And, remember readers, your tax dollars pay for expensive TB medication (if the case is discovered!).
BTW, still have had no one tell me if volunteers, working with resettlement agencies, are trained to spot symptoms or are educated on how to protect themselves and their families from becoming infected with TB when they work with newly arrived refugees.