Readers, I just wrote a post where a federal contractor tells us ‘what is working with refugee resettlement’ and here we go I have the perfect story about what is emphatically not working!

This film from the International Organization for Migration (a federal contractor that prepares refugees to travel to the US) will blow you away.  (Hat tip: Mars)

You may have heard that refugees with inactive Tuberculosis can come to the US (I know that is bad enough), but the IOM is running a facility in Thailand (presumably mostly for Burmese, those same refugees gardening in NYC) where they are treating people with active MULTI-DRUG-RESISTANT TB and attempting to get them well enough to come to your hometown!

Watch the film here (the music is lovely and the nurse is pleasant, but the news is frightening).  And, consider these questions:  who will monitor the refugees to assure they will stay on a prescribed drug regimen?  What if they stop taking drugs, will they become active carriers again?  Who will pay for all this (Obamacare?)?

A former Vietnamese refugee living in Tennessee is believed to have the mystery disease sometimes mistaken for Tuberculosis.  Researchers say it’s an immune deficiency disease similar to AIDs, but they don’t believe it is communicable.

We just had another story about refugees and disease yesterday, here.

From CBS Atlanta:

ATLANTA (AP) — Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV.

The patients’ immune systems become damaged, leaving them unable to fend off germs as healthy people do. What triggers this isn’t known, but the disease does not seem to be contagious.

This is another kind of acquired immune deficiency that is not inherited and occurs in adults, but doesn’t spread the way AIDS does through a virus, said Dr. Sarah Browne, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

She helped lead the study with researchers in Thailand and Taiwan where most of the cases have been found since 2004. Their report is in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

“This is absolutely fascinating. I’ve seen probably at least three patients in the last 10 years or so” who might have had this, said Dr. Dennis Maki, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

[….]

Kim Nguyen, 62, a seamstress from Vietnam who has lived in Tennessee since 1975, was gravely ill when she sought help for a persistent fever, infections throughout her bones and other bizarre symptoms in 2009. She had been sick off and on for several years and had visited Vietnam in 1995 and again in early 2009.

“She was wasting away from this systemic infection” that at first seemed like tuberculosis but wasn’t, said Dr. Carlton Hays Jr., a family physician at the Jackson Clinic in Jackson, Tenn.

[….]

The fact that nearly all the patients so far have been Asian or Asian-born people living elsewhere suggests that genetic factors and something in the environment such as an infection may trigger the disease, researchers conclude.

As I said yesterday, sure is a good thing we have Obamacare to help all these people.

….finds it lacking.

Here is the report released last Tuesday of an investigation by the Nevada Policy Research Institute that concludes that refugees are not being properly screened for diseases that impair their chances of making it in America, but also put the general public at risk for diseases which we are not familiar with.

Here is the background:

LAS VEGAS — Refugees from around the world come to Southern Nevada, often from countries with diseases not commonly seen in the native U.S.-born population.

How sound is the medical screening refugees receive? Are they getting adequate medical care?

According to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, more than a thousand refugees annually relocate to Las Vegas with federal assistance. The top countries of origin, says ORR, are Cuba, Iraq, Eritrea, Bhutan and Ethiopia.

Because the refugees often come “from regions of the world with high rates of certain diseases,” notes the federal agency, “refugees face special health challenges.” They thus must first undergo medical screening overseas to ensure they are medically eligible for the U.S. Refugee Program. Then, after arriving in the U.S., they are directed to undergo more in-depth medical examination.

One purpose of the U.S.-based screening, says ORR, is to protect the public health of U.S. citizens. A second purpose is to “provide refugees with a level of health and well-being required for and supportive of successful resettlement in the U.S.”

Since 1994, ORR’s partner in Nevada for refugee services has been Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada (CCSN). For fiscal year 2010-11, the nonprofit administered some $6.7 million in federal refugee funds. CCSN not only serves as ORR’s designated State Refugee Coordinator, but also operates the local refugee resettlement office.

The Southern Nevada Health District, under contract to Catholic Charities since at least 2008, conducts the federally required medical screenings for the refugees — including their health histories and physical examinations.

The refugee medical screenings conducted by SNHD over the last five years, however, do not appear to conform to federal standards.

Read the whole discussion on who is performing these examinations.

The Center for Disease Control says refugees are at greater risk for many diseases:

“Depending on their country of origin,” says the CDC, “refugees are at increased risk for many diseases, both infectious and noninfectious, not commonly seen in the native US-born population. Conditions such as tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections are particularly important to recognize early, given their potential public health consequences.”

So, what are they seeing in the Southern Nevada refugee population?

SNHD’s 2010 annual report states that its staff that year “screened 484 refugees,” with 109 of them requiring “follow-up for possible communicable diseases: 72 for tuberculosis; 13 for hepatitis B; 10 for ova and parasites; and 15 for sexually transmitted disease.” For 2011, the comparable numbers were 492 refugees, 109 receiving follow-up: 72 for tuberculosis; 17 for hepatitis B; 10 for ova and parasites; and 14 for sexually transmitted disease.   [What a coincidence that the numbers are so close from year to year, wonder if they are just making these up—ed]

Whew!  It’s a good thing we got Obamacare to pay for all of this!

See our health issues category, here, for many more stories like this one.