A new report investigating a recent measles outbreak in Minnesota offers a new window into how the disease can be spread by just one unvaccinated person.
High levels of autism in Somali children in Minneapolis lead parents to not vaccinate children for measles. Photo: NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/health/17auti.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Here’s how the 2011 outbreak, which sickened 19 children and two adults in Minnesota, happened:
An unvaccinated Somali-American 2-year-old some have dubbed “Patient Zero” traveled with his parents to Kenya, where he contracted the measles virus.
When the family returned to Minnesota, the child showed symptoms, including a fever, cough and vomiting.
But before he was diagnosed as having measles, the child had already passed the virus on to three other children at his daycare center, and another household member, CBS News reports.
Ultimately, more than 3,000 people in in the tight-knit Twin Cities Somali community were exposed to the disease.
[….]
Minnesota Department of Health researchers say that is typical in the Somali immigrant community, where MMR vaccination rates remain low, CBS News reports.
In 2004, the number of Somali children in the state who were on schedule with their MMR topped 90 percent.
“By 2010, that was down to just 54 percent,” epidemiologist Pam Gahr, who led the new research, told CBS.
She says the steep drop in vaccinations stems from misinformation about a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
See our health issues category with more on measles, autism and other health issues in the US immigrant/refugee population.
For long-time readers of RRW this should not be a surprise. Our normal refugee resettlement program allows refugees screened abroad with both TB and HIV/AIDS to enter the country, why would we expect that somehow the unscreened are all free of infectious diseases. (Hey, sure is good that we have Obamacare to take care of them all!)
See our post in March about how the foreign-born represent most of US TB cases, here.
TB germs spread through coughing. Those Baptists contracted by the feds to take care of the “children” are brave!
Here is the latest disturbing news from Todd Starnes at Fox News (Hat tip: Joanne):
Are the thousands of illegal immigrant kids housed in detention facilities happy and well fed — or are they living in disease-infested compounds shrouded in secrecy?
Well, it depends on who you ask.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seems to think the children coming across the southern border are remarkably healthy. It’s a sentiment shared by BCFS — the Texas-based agency formerly known as Baptist Child & Family Services contracted to run camps at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
[….]
However, at least a half dozen anonymous sources, including nurses and health care providers who worked at Lackland, allege that the government is covering up what they believe to be a very serious health threat.
Several of my sources tell me that tuberculosis has become a dangerous issue at both the border and the camps.
Read the whole thing yourself (if you can stand it!). I’m weary of the invasion news! Tomorrow we need to return to some other refugee news items that have fallen by the wayside in the last week!
See all of our previous posts on ‘unaccompanied minors’ by clicking here (if you aren’t sick of it!).
And, don’t miss our ‘health issues’category with over 200 posts on the health problems of refugees.
Editors note: This is a guest commentary from reader ‘pungentpeppers.’
We began resettling the more primitive Somali Bantus in 1999. http://www.bantusupport.pdx.edu/
What’s happening to the money used to settle refugees in the U.S.? It sure isn’t being spent to teach refugees the basics of life in the U.S.A.
A baby boy, born to Somali refugee parents, might still be alive today if his family understood about smoke detectors. Officials said 7-month-old Mohamed Ali likely died of smoke inhalation after his family’s apartment building in Phoenix caught fire June 23. The baby’s mother and grandmother were able to get out the other children living in the apartment, but heavy smoke and a wall of flames prevented them from saving the baby.
The fire displaced about 80 people from the 16-unit complex, which is largely occupied by refugee families. Most have since returned to their apartments.
Per police spokesman Sgt. Trent Crump, investigators believe the family’s apartment didn’t have a working detector — the battery was missing. Crump said that it’s not clear who removed the battery or when.
Fatuma Dubow, a Somali refugee who lives in the complex, said most people from her homeland don’t have electricity, so checking a smoke detector or understanding how it works is knowledge that develops over time.
When asked if she has checked her smoke detector’s battery, Dubow said she didn’t know how.
“I tried one day, but I couldn’t,” she said Tuesday as a maintenance man repaired water damage to her kitchen from fighting the fire.
Another Somali refugee who lives nearby said she knew that smoke detectors were important but was under the impression that they alerted police and fire automatically during a fire.
The woman, who did not want to provide her name, said it takes some immigrants years to learn things such as how to dial 911 or what to do when they smell a gas leak. Some type of instruction would help, she said.
Generally refugee resettlement agencies send a caseworker to meet the family at the airport and drive them to a furnished apartment. [It is in their contract with the federal government–ed]. They are then told how to work kitchen appliances, operate the air-conditioner, lock the doors and windows, run the hot- and cold-water taps and call 911. Cathy Peterson, of Catholic Charities Community Service, said “The heath and safety (primer) would include the smoke alarms”.
It’s plain that this group of refugees were not given adequate instruction or training. It is unfair to them, and to their neighbors, to settle them in unfamiliar environments that are poles apart from what they are used to, and to expect that somehow, magically, the foreign newcomers will “breath in” our way of life.
If people cannot read or understand the basics, what’s the use of giving them a quick talk and handing them a health and safety booklet?! Do the refugee agencies expect Phoenix fire officials to teach them our way of life in Bantu?! The refugee agencies get paid big bucks to bring people here, but their profit-maximizing, hare-brained “bring ’em and dump ’em” scheme – well, it just cost this baby his life.
Hundreds of migrants on US border found with scabies. This story is from April. Imagine what it is now! http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=1038209#.U7VcfkCinC0
The latest story is at InfoWars yesterday (hat tip: Drudge):
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is responding to the public health crisis spurred by the recent surge of illegal immigrants by activating an emergency facility designed to monitor and coordinate “emergency response activities to public health threats,” the agency admitted to Infowars Tuesday.
In a taped phone call, a CDC information hotline representative confirmed that, unbeknownst to the American public, the agency has activated their intelligence arm, the Emergency Operation Center, to deal with various diseases accompanying the surge of illegal aliens currently staging a virtually uncontested U.S. invasion.
“In response to this influx of unaccompanied alien children, CDC’s Emergency Operation Center (EOC) has been activated,” the CDC rep stated, likely reading from a script. “Through this activation the EOC will work closely with the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. CDC staff will consult on health issues and the UAC’s countries of origin, consult on shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene and provide staff for public health support.”
Thanks to everyone who sent us the story from earlier this week at The Blaze (medical staff threatened, told to keep silent about health crisis).
“When they found out the kids had scabies, the charge nurse was adamant — ‘Don’t mention that. Don’t say scabies,’” a nurse told Starnes. “But everybody knew they had scabies. Some of the workers were very concerned about touching things and picking things up. They asked if they should be concerned, but they were told don’t worry about it.
See our Health Issues category for a catalog of all the health (both mental and physical) problems (Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs as well) refugees and other migrants bring to America. As we have often commented, forget terrorism or the social costs, it will be the threat of one’s children contracting some awful contagious disease that will wake up the generally tuned-out public to the immigration apocalypse we are now facing.
See all of our posts on ‘unaccompanied minors’ (mostly teenaged boys), here.
As long-time readers know, Sweden is my bet for the first European country to fall to Islamic dominance. We have an extensive archive, click here, on the insane Swedish Leftists who have opened their doors wide to any Muslim migrants who can get there!
Here is a story from last week (posted on World Refugee Propaganda Day no less) about a shocking discovery in Sweden! All the girls in one school class were mutilated!
School health services in the small Swedish city of Norrköping have found 60 cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) among schoolgirls since March, with evidence of mutilation found in all 30 girls in one class, 28 of the most severe form.
In Sweden, where the EU’s Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) says that FGM “is considered to be a serious problem,” the law enables genital examination of children to be carried out without parents’ consent.
FGM has been a crime in Sweden since 1982 and can be punished by up to four years in prison, increased to 10 years if judged to be an aggravated offence.
According to EIGE, concerns about FGM became widespread in Sweden in the early and mid-1990s with the influx of Somali migrants: “The first national action taken in the field…was initiated after alarming testimonies from the healthcare sector indicating the existence of FGM among many — if not all — women that originated from FGM-practising countries.”
If they are “refugees” who fear for their lives, what the hell are they doing going back to their “home country?”
Now the daughters of immigrants are in danger of undergoing FGM. According to the Local, the risk of becoming a victim of the procedure increases in the summer when many schoolgirls visit their parents’ home country: “We’re working to inform parents that they could face prison if they come back and their children have undergone female genital mutilation,” said Petra Blom Andersson, student health coordinator in Norrköping.
Mutilation carried out abroad has been a crime in Sweden since 1999.
In 2013, Somalis were the third largest group granted asylum in the EU countries, according to a Eurostat figures reported yesterday by Breitbart London, with almost 10,000 granted protection. Sweden gave refugee status to 26,400 people last year, more than any other EU country.
You know this is happening in America too! The silence is deafening!
