Category: health issues

Canadian government trying to NOT give free health care to asylum seekers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly new regulations would also have cut off health care to refugees, and the refugee industry went nuts.  So the government backtracked and wants to make it clear that asylum seekers (really aliens who got into Canada illegally or came on a visa of some sort and now claim they will be persecuted if returned to their home country) will not have the benefits of Canada’s SOCIALIZED medicine, but proper refugees will.   Why?  Canada can’t afford to do it!

In the meantime, the US is extending Obamacare to refugees and presumably asylees as well as we reported, here, a couple of days ago.

Here is the story from The Star:

Ottawa has backed down on its health-care cuts for resettled refugees on income support, but other asylum seekers are still not immune from the axe.

The federal government quietly amended information about the changes on its website late Friday, just before the cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) kicked in on the weekend.

As a result, impoverished refugees resettled to Canada through government and private sponsorships can still access hospital services, diagnostic and ambulance services, as well as supplementary health support such as wheelchairs, dental and vision care — equivalent to what is available to low-income Canadians.

Critics who fought staunchly against the cuts said Ottawa’s flip-flop indicates the government’s recognition of vulnerable refugees’ health-care needs.

Alexis Pavlich, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, said the minister has “repeatedly” stated that government-sponsored refugees would continue to receive health care.

“The original criteria did not make this intention clear, which is why the language of the policy has been modified,” she said in an email to the Star.

“Our intention was to ensure that those who come to Canada as asylum seekers from abroad do not receive better health-care coverage than Canadians. Our intention was never to have this policy impact government-sponsored refugees.”

However, critics said the last-minute reprieve is not good enough and many are still denied basic health care, including those who come from Ottawa’s yet-to-defined “safe countries” — likely including Mexico, Hungary and Czech Republic — and failed refugee claimants awaiting appeals and deportation.

Imagine that—a “refugee” from Mexico gets all the way to Canada and is denied dental care!  What is this mean old world coming to?

Refugees will be eligible for all benefits of Obamacare

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Within hours of the Supreme Court decision on Obama’s health care law, the Department of Health and Human Services came out with its guidance for refugees on how to get their Obamacare.  Because we lost our internet connection for a couple of days, I wasn’t able to post this sooner.

Pre-existing condition?  Not a US citizen?  Can’t find work?  No worries, line up!

Here is the guidance:

Refugee status is a form of protection that may be granted to people who meet the definition of refugee, are of special humanitarian concern to the United States, and are typically outside of their country and unable or unwilling to return home because they fear serious harm. Refugees come to the United States to start a new life. They work hard to find jobs and provide for their families. Today, many refugees lack health insurance, making it hard for them to get the care they need.

Refugees, as lawfully present immigrants, are eligible for the same protections and benefits under the Affordable Care Act as U.S. citizens. Refugees will remain exempt from the five‐year waiting period to receive Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and will receive many new benefits thanks to health reform. The benefits and protections in the Affordable Care Act are particularly important for refugees, who often arrive to the United States after years without access to proper medical care, and in many cases work for employers who do not provide health insurance. As outlined below, the new law will give refugees access to affordable health coverage and protection against insurance practices that can deny coverage to individuals with pre‐existing conditions or those who become ill.

Read it all!

At the end of the guidance, note that all of those youths (thousands annually) who come across our borders illegally and end up in the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Unaccompanied Minor Program, will get their health care until age 26 just like all of your kids!

Effective 2014, states must extend Medicaid coverage up to age 26 for young adults who have aged out of the foster care system, including those aging out of the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors program.

Of course now we have the answer to our previous question—are the unaccompanied illegal alien minors returned to their home country once they reach the age of 18?   Nope!

Welcoming tapeworms to America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Oh, this is lovely—a report from the Centers for Disease Control (Emerging Infectious Diseases) tells us that as many as one fifth to one quarter of  refugees from Burundi, Burma, Bhutan and Laos show antibodies for a disease that comes from the larval stage of tapeworms. 

Whew!  It is a good thing we now have Obamacare so we can pay for all the medical problems coming in through the immigrant population!

Here is the abstract (emphasis mine):

Neurocysticercosis (NCC) is a disease caused by central nervous system infection by the larval stage of the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium. In developing countries, NCC is a leading cause of adult-onset epilepsy. Case reports of NCC are increasing among refugees resettled to the United States and other nations, but the underlying prevalence among refugee groups is unknown. We tested stored serum samples from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Migrant Serum Bank for antibodies against T. solium cysts by using the enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot. Seroprevalence was high among all 4 populations tested: refugees from Burma (23.2%), Lao People’s Democratic Republic (18.3%), Bhutan (22.8%), and Burundi (25.8%). Clinicians caring for refugee populations should suspect NCC in patients with seizure, chronic headache, or unexplained neurologic manifestations. Improved understanding of the prevalence of epilepsy and other associated diseases among refugees could guide recommendations for their evaluation and treatment before, during, and after resettlement.

How do refugees get these tapeworms and the resultant disease?

Cysticercosis is a disease caused by infection with the larval stage of the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium. Humans and pigs acquire cysticercosis by ingesting T. solium eggs shed in the feces of humans with taeniasis (i.e., infected with an adult intestinal tapeworm). Upon ingestion, tapeworm eggs release oncospheres, which invade the intestinal wall and disseminate through the bloodstream to form cysts throughout the body. The natural lifecycle of T. solium tapeworms completes when a human eats pork contaminated by T. solium larval cysts because these can then develop into adult egg-producing intestinal tapeworms. This endemic lifecycle occurs primarily in regions where sanitation is poor and where pigs are allowed to roam and access raw human sewage.

What does the disease do?

Neurocysticercosis (NCC) occurs when cysts develop within the central nervous system (CNS); NCC is the primary cause of illness in T. solium infection. The clinical features of NCC cover a diverse range of neurologic manifestations, including seizures, headache, intracranial hypertension, hydrocephalus, encephalitis, stroke, cognitive impairment, and psychiatric disturbances (1,2). In areas in which T. solium infection is endemic, it is a major cause of epilepsy, with 30% of seizure disorder attributable to NCC.

What refugee groups in the US did they test?

We demonstrated that exposure to T. solium parasitic infection is common among refugees from Burma, Laos, Burundi, and Bhutan who resettled to the United States. All 4 populations had seroprevalence of antibodies against T. solium cysts comparable to or higher than the seroprevalence in well-characterized T. solium–endemic communities in Latin America where illness attributable to NCC is common (4,5,19,20). The widespread exposure among these groups has clinical and public health implications because these populations are resettling to the United States, where the infection is not endemic and where many clinical providers are not familiar with the disease manifestations, diagnosis, or treatment.

Is it transmittable to others?  YUP!  (Keep away from the feces!)

Although human cysticercosis is considered a dead end in the T. solium life cycle, a person with taeniasis can transmit infection to others by shedding infective eggs in feces. An adult-stage tapeworm can live for several years within the human intestine and intermittently releasing proglottids containing tens of thousands of potentially infective eggs.

Just for your information, in the last two years we didn’t bring too many refugees from Burundi (FY2010—530 and FY2011—110) and Laos (36 and 211 respectively), but Burma and Bhutan (really Nepal) is where the motherload of refugees came from in the last few years.  See stats here.  In FY 2010 we resettled 16,693 from Burma and 12,363 from Bhutan/Nepal and FY 2011 saw an even larger number resettled to your towns— 16,972 from Burma and 14,999 from Bhutan/Nepal.   I guess this means that 3000-4000 refugees a year from Burma and Bhutan may have been exposed to tapeworms.   Doesn’t it make you wonder where they have left all those eggs?
(Let’s see tens of thousands of eggs per tapeworm x 3000 refugees = 30 million eggs!)

The Somalification of Kansas

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update April 27th:  At least some in the Kansas legislature are attempting to keep shariah law from creeping into Kansas, here.

In 2008 Emporia, Kansas put up a fight.  So much of a fight that the Tyson Foods meat-packing operation closed down and moved the Somalis out.  We created an entire category about the conflict in Emporia—it is here with 37 archived posts.  Now we know from this article in the Garden City Telegram that they moved some of them (mostly young men) to Garden City, KS and put them to work at a processing plant there.   [By the way, Tyson is working its magic in Tennessee as well, here].

By the tone of the article by reporter Shajia Ahmad (a Somali or Arab?) it seems that Garden City is going to experience the Somalification (my word!) of their city without even a whimper of protest.

Just read this article!  There are clearly problems in Garden City—you can tell by the reporter’s choice of the word “challenge” instead of problem.  It is typical verbiage and standard reporting from those too chicken to speak the truth for fear of being labeled racists!

Now we know where the Emporia Somalis went.  From the Garden City Telegram:

In the last four or five years, Garden City has seen an influx of several hundred Burmese and Somali families that have moved from other areas of the country to live and work in southwest Kansas, like many other regions in the Midwest and High Plains, spurred primarily by jobs in the meat-packing industry.

Many in Kansas, especially, came to Finney County* to work at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant following the shuttering of Tyson’s Emporia-based beef-packing plant in early 2008, where many of the 1,500 laid-off workers were Somali refugees.

Social service agencies hired a Somali expert to tell the Kansans how to tip-toe around the Somalis cultural and religious practices so as best to “serve them.”   The greatest challenge is language—heck they have only been here in America for 5-10 years how could anyone expect them to have learned English!

Weber, whose agency helped sponsor Farah’s visit to Garden City to educate and inform local social service representatives and other stakeholders on salient issues concerning the Somali residents, said the biggest challenge facing locals is the language barrier.

“To translate, and know medical terms and child development terms … we’re working on it, but it’s a huge challenge for us right now,” Weber said.

Ah, the “challenges:”

Farah said the dynamics of the community in the Minnesota metropolis differ greatly from Garden City. However, understanding many simple traditional and cultural practices and norms will help in bettering communication between the agencies trying to serve refugees and other Somali residents locally.

For example, many of those in attendance Tuesday from various community organizations said they are challenged with Somali clients not showing up or returning for health or medical-related appointments for either them or their children.  [Readers, this means that, for example, they may not be returning for immunizations (measles!) or to continue treatment for TB–ed]

Farah said that in Somalia, where medical treatment is often free and appointments don’t exist, most only go to hospitals or clinics as a last resort, after home remedies, spiritual practices and all other options have been exhausted.

Does no one have the fortitude to tell them they are in America now!  And, just imagine for a moment that you were dropped off in Somalia, do you think for one minute that you would be allowed to continue your “spiritual” practices expecting Somalis to bend over backwards to satisfy your American cultural and religious needs?   LOL!  Can you see it now, some Somali (or even Kenyan) city employees calling in experts on America to tell the locals how to treat you!

When they disappear we have to “understand where these things come from:”

Farah said while Somalis celebrate the arrival of newborns, many also practice keeping the baby and mother in the home for the first 40 days.

“So it’s a little hard when you tell them, ‘come to the WIC program and we’ll register you, or come to the hospital and there’s a two week check-up on the baby,'” Farah said in reference to the USDA program that offers low-income women, infant and young children nutrition and health education and assistance. “When we are visiting with Somali moms, and then they’re disappearing and we can’t find them until they come back some time, well, we have to understand where these things are coming from.”

Americans are here to “serve” the Somalis.  It is called dhimmitude —get used to that word!

On top of navigating a new society and system, many rituals and cultural norms are important to members of the Somali community. Social workers, case managers and others in the health and service industries should be informed of such rituals and norms if they’re to serve their clients competently.

For example, Farah reminded the group that most Somalis are Sunni Muslims, who are prohibited from eating pork and other pig products. What’s more, many only shake hands with others of the same gender.

Yes, indeed we must learn to serve the Somalis.  (Anne Richard would surely tell you so as she gets ready to admit many more to the US for her gang of globalist industries looking for laborers and Democratic Party voters.)

* Until I looked just now I hadn’t realized that I have written many posts on Finney County, KS where we are told whites of European descent are now in the minority.

$4 million in grant money available to track refugees with communicable diseases

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This week I received an announcement from the Office or Refugee Resettlement forwarding a grant announcement for some group or entity to apply to set up a surveillance system to track diseases coming in with refugees.  No kidding!  Apparently we have no way to track refugees with diseases at this time!

The full announcement at the Center for Disease Control is here (I couldn’t open the file), but here are some parts of the document from the e-mail.

The title is:  Strengthening Surveillance for Diseases Among Newly-Arrived Immigrants and Refugees

Measurable outcomes of the program will be in alignment with one (or more) of the following performance goal(s) for the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases: Protect Americans from Infectious Diseases

Here are some sections of the announcement (emphasis mine):

Background

Every year, approximately 70,000 refugees and 400,000 immigrants resettle to the United States from overseas.  Refugees are particularly vulnerable populations, marginalized from public-health surveillance, preventive treatment and health care in their home countries and countries of temporary asylum. They have complex health-care issues, such as low baseline vaccination rates and high rates of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria, and intestinal parasites.
[no wonder the cost of health care is sky rocketing!—ed]

[….]

One challenge to developing best practice health recommendations for refugees and immigrants is that there is no standardized national surveillance system for the identification of acute illnesses in newly arrived refugees and immigrants.  Reporting of health conditions in refugees and immigrants that are identified after arrival is limited to the required reportable conditions as specified by state and federal requirements.  However, refugee or immigrant status is not reported. Consequently, there is little data to evaluate the effectiveness and quality of the required overseas medical examination, the overseas presumptive treatment and other public health interventions, or to guide the establishment of evidence-based guidelines for the post-arrival medical examination.   A better understanding of medical conditions in refugees and immigrants is essential for educating health care providers in the U.S. about those conditions, particularly tropical diseases, with which they may be largely unfamiliar, and for providing assistance to state and local refugee health programs so that they can better prepare for the arrival of these new Americans.

Since 2004, CDC has responded to over 50 domestic and international outbreaks of infectious diseases among U.S.-bound refugees, including measles, rubella, varicella, cholera, hepatitis A, O’nyong-nyong fever, and multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.* These outbreaks, some of which were associated with the importation of infectious diseases to the United States and secondary domestic transmission within the United States, have taxed the resources of U.S. State and local health departments.  These outbreaks also represent an obstacle to the U.S. Government’s plans for elimination of vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles and rubella, and constitute a risk for the importation of emerging infectious diseases. In addition to the public-health resources required for outbreak response, the outbreaks temporarily halted resettlement and cost the U.S. government hundreds of thousands of dollars in flight cancellations and other expenses.  Early detection through pre-departure surveillance and appropriate, cost-effective public-health tools, such as routine vaccination, could have prevented these financial costs, and the mortality and the serious morbidity that occurred among U.S.-bound refugees.

Most recent outbreaks of communicable infectious diseases among refugees have occurred in refugee camps with a mixture of U.S.-bound and non-U.S.-bound refugees.  While detecting, controlling and preventing outbreaks as early as possible in refugee camps is the most effective means to prevent the importation of communicable diseases into the United States, limited public health infrastructure and laboratory resources present challenges to disease surveillance in these settings.  Conducting pre-departure surveillance in U.S.-bound immigrants is even more challenging since they are geographically dispersed and usually fully integrated into the local community.  Until these complex and far-reaching limitations can be addressed, enhancing surveillance among refugees and immigrants after arrival in the United States will provide the most effective means of monitoring their health status, detecting outbreaks of communicable disease and evaluating the overseas health interventions designed to improve their health before resettlement.

Purpose

The purpose of the program is to conduct surveillance to detect, prevent and control diseases and evaluate existing health programs to improve the health of refugees and/or immigrants that are newly arrived in the United States.  The program will: 1) enhance existing surveillance networks for communicable and non-communicable diseases, including, but are not limited to: vaccine-preventable diseases, malaria, hepatitis, intestinal parasites, nutritional deficiencies and anemia; 2) evaluate the health status of refugees and/or immigrants for the purposes of informing and improving U.S. programs for overseas and the post-arrival health assessments and interventions, such as presumptive treatment for parasitic infections; and 3) improve the health of refugees and/or immigrants undergoing U.S. resettlement and protect the health of their receiving communities [your town!—ed] by controlling the spread of communicable diseases.  This program addresses the “Healthy People 2020” focus area(s) of Global Health.

* I bet you have been told that no one gets into the US with drug-resistant TB!   Think about this: a refugee or other immigrant gets into the US and can just disappear into the woodwork, so even if they have been identified with some communicable disease and possibly started treatment, there is no way of following them or to monitor their treatment as they simply move to another location in the US.

Endnote:  If you are thinking about sending comments to the US State Department May 1st meeting, communicable disease is a good topic.  More on refugee health problems can be found in our Health Issues category, here.  We have 125 posts in that category and the first ones we posted in 2007 involved the Fort Wayne, IN (Allen County) health department’s crisis with too many TB cases to manage.