This is a little story I didn’t get around to a couple of days ago. Thanks to Robin (and maybe someone else) who sent it my way.
We think we have it bad—check out Germany’s measles cases and this more detailed story. Spikes in Germany related to refugee and asylum seeker waves. http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/measles-outbreak-in-germany-10-times-worse-that-in-usa/article/425487?noredir=1
Authorities in Berlin say a spike in measles infections has been traced to unvaccinated refugees but at least two measles cases appear to have come from the United States.
Berlin has recorded 468 cases of measles this year, more than the rest of Germany had during all of 2014.
Dr. Dirk Werber of Berlin’s state health office said Friday that a child asylum seeker from Bosnia is considered the index case because many subsequent infections among refugees were genetically identical.
Measles has since spread to Berlin’s non-refugee population, partly because immunization rates among over-45s are low.
Two cases are believed to have been caught in the US. Related to refugees here too? That we don’t know.
Werber said one woman and possibly a child appeared to have contracted measles while traveling in the United States.
Germany is having its migrant problems, that is for sure! Click here for our complete archive on Germany.
I like this photo of Gov. LePage holding the Heritage Foundation’s copy of the US Constitution.
Update!Reader Dana sent us this link. 16 Test positive for TB at Sacramento area high school—wonder where it came from???
Not physically slapped around, but verbally in the Bangor Daily News which apparently wants to debunk his claim. Note the first sentence of the story by Christopher Cousins—if you don’t read beyond that, you have been told what the media wants you to believe.
….however, there are a large number of ACTIVE TB cases in Maine!
Regular readers may remember that Maine has become the go-to state for asylum seekers—migrants who got into the country one way or another and are now seeking ‘refugee’ status. In Maine, while they are waiting for the decision, they can get various social services that are not available elsewhere.
There may be other states that give out welfare to asylum seekers, but I haven’t read about those. Gov. LePage has been attempting to remove the sweetener that Maine has been providing.
AUGUSTA, Maine — The consensus among public health experts regarding Gov. Paul LePage’s comments linking illegal immigrants to the spread of infectious diseases during his State of the State address on Tuesday is that they have seen no data to back up his claims.
Officials from the LePage administration have provided no substantiation for the comments and have not responded since Wednesday to the Bangor Daily News’ requests for data and comment on the matter.
Here’s what the governor said:
“When a refugee comes here from a foreign country, they get a medical assessment, and we know their health. But when they come here illegally, they don’t get medical assessments. And one thing that we don’t want to see is the uptick of hepatitis C, HIV and tuberculosis. But it is here. We are dealing with it. And it is very costly. So if nothing else, they should be getting a medical assessment when they get here.”
By the way, even if a refugee gets a medical assessment before entering the US, the presence of TB or HIV is not a bar to entry.
So, after many paragraphs of making light of the governor’s comments we come to this one (below) on TB. I was blown away by the number of ACTIVE Tuberculosis cases diagnosed in Maine. Do you remember when one guy with active TB got on a plane somewhere a few years ago and all hell broke loose in the media — well, heck, why isn’t there a lot of news about these ACTIVE cases in Maine? How many are there in other states?
The resettlement industry mouthpieces are quick to tell us that LATENT TB is no big deal. O.K. but what about all these active cases getting in here? Twenty plus cases of ACTIVE TB over three years is a lot of cases—and, you are paying for their meds!
Active tuberculosis cases were higher in 2012 and 2013 than they had been since 2009, with 15 reported cases in 2013. There were less than 10 new cases reported in 2014, according to Hannan’s data. The CDC also tracks latent cases, which means the tuberculosis bacteria is present but the patient shows no symptoms (untreated latent tuberculosis is a precursor to full-blown tuberculosis in up to 10 percent of cases). There were 433 latent cases recorded in 2013, up from 398 in 2012. The CDC report also includes the country of birth for people recorded to have latent tuberculosis. The top countries of origin for latent tuberculosis cases were Angola (41), Burundi (43), Congo (51), Iraq (41), Rwanda (38), Somalia (53) and the United States (78).The 2013 CDC report contains no information about how long the patients had been in Maine before their diagnosis.
See our‘health issues’category for more on diseases, mental health problems and other medical issues involving refugees. I’ve often said that health concerns are going to have a far greater impact on American attitudes toward immigration than the fear of terrorists getting in here.
The number has jumped dramatically as Muslim refugees have entered the US from Somalia, Ethiopia and to a lesser degree Egypt. The horrific practice has been illegal in the US for nearly 20 years!
This map is incredible since it almost state-for-state matches the highest refugee resettlement states in the US!
Nearly 507,000 women and girls in the United States could be at risk of female genital excision, including 57,000 in California, a new study has found.
That is more than twice the number that were thought to be at risk in 2000, the last year for which estimates are available.
Analysts at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, attributed the preliminary findings released Friday to an increase in immigration [REFUGEES—ed] from countries where the practice is common, including Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia.
It is unclear how many families continue the practice after moving to the U.S., but community activists say there is anecdotal evidence of girls being sent back to their parents’ home countries for “vacation cutting” and of traditional cutters traveling to the U.S. to circumcise girls in this country.
To estimate the number who may have undergone the procedure or be at risk, the research group used data collected by the Census Bureau for the 2013 American Community Survey to determine the number of women and girls whose families originate in countries where female genital excision is practiced. It then applied the prevalence rates in those countries to the numbers in the U.S.
The methodology is similar to that used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a study that found about 168,000 women and girls were at risk of genital excision in the U.S. in 1990, said Mark Mather, the group’s associate vice president for U.S. programs.
[….]
California is the state with the highest at-risk population, followed by New York (48,000) and Minnesota (44,000), the Population Reference Bureau found. [We know that Minnesota has the highest Somali population in the US—ed]
Since I was on the subject of refugee health and university professors in my last post, here is a story from Canada (one of few stories not discussing Islamic terrorism and immigration!).
By the way, if you didn’t know, the US refugee program admits refugees with HIV and we supply their meds in your local health departments. I had forgotten, but we have a fairly large archive on HIV and refugees, click hereto learn more.
Renu Mandhane, the program director International Human Rights Program at the U of Toronto: Canada should provide asylum and medical care to HIV positive refugees.
Canadian refugee and resettlement policies are negatively affecting would-be refugee claimants abroad who have HIV or are at high risk of contracting the virus, a University of Toronto program has alleged.
The International Human Rights Program at the university’s faculty of law is launching a research project to advocate for changes on the immigration policy that has created the “designated countries of origin” list.
[….]
“Having HIV when you’re a refugee living in a camp bordering Syria is potentially a death sentence,” she said. “Canada can play an important role in the global fight against HIV by providing asylum to people affected or at high risk, and provide them with access to medical treatment.”
The research project will focus on Mexico and Syria as case studies. Syria is not on the list of countries deemed to be safe, but there are many refugees on its borders that need equal attention due to the vulnerability surrounding them, said Mandhane.
[….]
The program, which recently got a $75,000 grant from Elton John AIDS Foundation, is expected to conduct field research this summer and come up with the findings next fall.
See our Canada category here, and our Health issues category here.
There really isn’t much new and exciting in this story, but I’m posting it because I was interested in the small number of refugees going to Vermont, after all, Vermont’s senior Senator Patrick Leahy has, over the years, been a big pusher for more refugees and more stuff for them.
UVM psychology professor Karen Fondacaro will be busy with her Bhutanese torture victims. Here with co-founder of NESTT (New England Survivors of Torture and Trauma). http://www.uvm.edu/~psych/?Page=news/NESTT_walk_2010.html
We have had many many reports of Bhutanese (really Nepali people) who were living in UN camps on the edge of Nepal until we took 80,000 of them to America in the last 6 years or so and who are now in the US in need of mental health programs. See our Bhutanese archivewith many posts on the high suicide rate among this group of refugees, some want to go home. (BTW, Reader CW recently suggested a the creation of a ‘Repatriation Fund’for any refugee, unhappy with America, to be allowed to go home.)
From Kentucky.com (I wondered if a Kentucky publication reported this story as a hint to start mental health counseling in KY for its burgeoning refugee population):
BURLINGTON, Vt. — The scars Ajuda Thapa carries today are emotional — the product of years living in fear, being forced from her home in Bhutan and enduring the murder of her husband during 19 stateless years before she arrived in Vermont as a refugee.
Like many others like her here, she’s helping ease the emotional trauma she suffered through a special program at the University of Vermont for the region’s refugees.
[….]
But the safety she has now didn’t do anything for the anxiety, depression and lingering emotional scars that threatened to turn her into a recluse hiding in her home. So her doctor referred her to Connecting Cultures, a program at the University of Vermont that has helped ease the emotional trauma of hundreds of others like her.
Thapa regularly attends meetings where she talks about what she experienced.
“It helps a lot to get relief from that kind of mental pain,” said Thapa, an ethnic Nepali who became stateless after leaving Bhutan in 1992.
Here are some numbers for Vermont:
Connecting Cultures organizers have found that about 65 percent of the estimated 7,000 refugees living in greater Burlington from more than two dozen countries had suffered some form of torture. [Dr. Fondacaro will be very busy!]
[….]
Thapa has struggled to deal with the emotional trauma that comes with the nearly two decades of fear and loss she experienced after being forced from her home. She is one of an estimated 1,300 Bhutanese refugees who have been resettled in Vermont, the largest single refugee nationality in the state.
Those are paltry numbers compared to many other states…
There surely needs to be a national campaign to persuade Vermonters to be more “welcoming” and to accept more refugees there, after all that would only be fair!
