Category: health issues

West Texans worried about health issues involving refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Folks in Midland, TX, must be expressing concern about refugees arriving with health problems or this pow-wow wouldn’t have happened.  From a publication called, West Texas Missioner:

First Presbyterian Church played host to a large and distinguished gathering for a wide-ranging discussion of international refugees and public health. Both government and non-government agencies at the local, regional and state levels were well-represented at the meeting, which provided an opportunity to address health concerns raised by Midland’s small-but-growing international refugee community.

Those in attendance learned about the stringent guidelines (overseen by the World Health Organization) for those who wish to apply for residence in the United States as refugees…..

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!

This is what they tell concerned citizens, but it’s not the truth.  Refugees enter the US with HIV/AIDs and with TB.   Just ask the swamped health department in Allen County, IN (Fort Wayne).    Often because health departments are swamped, or a volag is not doing its job, refugee children and adults go unscreened and unvaccinated for many many months.  

See our health issues category for more information.

New vaccine required for green card holders causes controversy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is just for your information thanks to Blulitespecial.  I thought it was kind of interesting in light of the fact that we have immigrants running around the US with what I would characterize as more important diseases such as TB and HIV.  From AP:

DALLAS — An expensive cervical cancer vaccine is now needed by young female immigrants before they can become legal U.S. residents, a requirement that immigration advocates say is unfair.

Federal officials recently added the Gardasil vaccine to a list of vaccinations that immigrants must have before they can obtain green cards. The cervical cancer vaccine is required of females ages 11 to 26.

The vaccine protects against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer and genital warts. But the vaccine is one of the most expensive and controversial, primarily because it is given at a young age.

Gardasil, given in three shots over a six-month period, costs about $400. That puts an added burden on green card applicants already paying more than $1,000 in fees and hundreds of dollars for mandatory medical exams, advocates say.

I’m going to bet this cost issue is bogus because likely the taxpayer will end up picking up the tab.

U.S. attorney general orders asylum for victim of female genital mutilation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

CNN reports:

The U.S. attorney general is trying to prevent immigration authorities from sending a Muslim woman to her home country, where she was a victim of female genital mutilation.

In a stinging order overriding federal immigration courts, Mukasey blasted a decision that said a 28-year-old citizen and native of Mali should be expelled “because her genitalia already had been mutilated [so] she had no basis to fear future persecution if returned to her home country.”

Calling the rationale “flawed,” Mukasey sent the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals with orders to reconsider.

The woman, a native of Mali, begged the court not to send her back to her Bambara tribe.

The 28-year-old said if she returned and had a daughter, the child also would be subject to mutilation. The woman also said she faced forced marriage if she had to go home.

Several members of Congress —  Reps. John Conyers, Zoe Lofgren and Sen. Patrick Leahy — had asked Mukasey to look into the matter after the court’s decision last January.

“Female genital mutilation is a gross violation of a woman’s human rights and has traditionally been grounds for the granting of an asylum claim,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, said in the letter.

This is always an easy call for government officials, who find the idea of genital mutilation stomach-turning, as any normal person would. The trouble is that the practice is widespread in certain countries of Africa and the Middle East. Any woman who makes it to America from such a country is therefore likely to get asylum. As with every refugee and asylum question, are we prepared to take all the women who want to come to America from these countries? NGOs and the UN are working in Africa to end the practice, with reported success. (Funny, I don’t hear about them working in the Arab countries of the Middle East. Maybe they wouldn’t get such an easy reception there.) If the members of Congress are really concerned about female genital mutilation, they should be supporting these efforts.

Hat tip to Bluelite Special. 

HIV epidemic (in the US!) reported among Black immigrants from Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As I said earlier today, most of our important stories come to us from our readers and this one is no exception.   You may have heard on the news a few months ago that HIV-AIDS was on the rise in the Black community in the US, but it appears that rise is not among Black Americans but is a result of immigration.  Unfortunately I don’t have time to do it justice but here is how it begins:

There is a “hidden epidemic” of HIV amongst African migrants living in the United States, according to investigators writing in the September 12 edition of AIDS. The researchers found that African-born individuals in the US had a disproportionately high prevalence of HIV – although they comprised only 0.6% of the study population, almost 4% of HIV diagnoses were amongst African-born individuals. Furthermore, the investigators found that in one health area approximately 50% of HIV infections amongst black people were amongst individuals originating in Africa.

Apparently when statistics are gathered, no one distinguishes between those Blacks who are native born and immigrant Blacks.   The article goes on to spell out some of the consequences:

Failure to acknowledge the scale of the HIV epidemic amongst African-born individuals, could, the investigators argue, mean that the HIV prevention and care needs of African-born US residents are being neglected. The investigators call on the US government and health authorities to target information about the availability of HIV testing and care to individuals from Africa, and for the gathering of accurate surveillance data about the country of origin of individuals diagnosed with HIV.

Aidsmap News tells us something we already know and that is that HIV positive refugees have been allowed to enter the US and it obliquely mentions that no one will be barred from entering with HIV in the very near future (thanks to a bill signed into law by President Bush).

Read the whole article here and take note of the US hot spots for the immigrant-fueled HIV epidemic.  See our health issues category for all of our posts on this important topic.

Maybe Somali polygamy perpetuates possible gene connection to autism

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I  wrote a post a little over a week ago about how Somali refugee children in America are showing extremely high and unexplained rates of autism for those born in the US.   Minnesota schools are seeing these children enter the sytsem and are attempting to cope with the alarming influx.

In our earlier post we cited an article that had a couple of possible suggestions.  One was the usual complaint about immunizations and the other was the possibility that the relative lack (compared to Africa) of sunshine in Minnesota (and Sweden where the problem is also appearing) might explain the high rate.

However, this article in a blog called “A War of Illusions” leads to another possible cause for the high rate of autism in Somalis in America.  But, first here is what the post says about the situation in Minnesota where a conference will soon take place to address the crisis.

About a quarter of all autism children who attend autism classrooms for students functioning too low to be mainstreamed in regular schoolrooms are Somali. Special education specialists said that indicates that the degree of autism Somali children are developing is on the severe end of the autism spectrum.

“I’m not seeing Aspergers syndrome and the full spectrum of autism in Somali children. It is the more classic forms of autism in general; it is the more severe forms of autism that we’re seeing in our Somali babies that are born here,” said Anne Harrington, early childhood special education coordinator for the Minneapolis district and a specialist on the topic.

“If they’re having more children, many of the siblings also have autism. We have a number of [Somali] families who have two children on the autism spectrum and sometimes more. I’ve been working to get somebody to look at this and pay attention because it feels like this is too specific [to Somalis]. It’s got to be preventable,” Harrington said.

The article also tells us there is a lot of shame in the Somali community associated with families who have autistic children which makes me think that the tough life in Africa may have eliminated some of these children at a young age thus making it appear that somehow their move to the US is responsible for a jump in the numbers.

The blogger then leads us to new research that may show that autism is genetic. 

Many cases of autism are caused by genetic defects that disrupt the brain’s ability to learn, according to groundbreaking research that promises to lead to new therapies.

To do the research scientists needed to find large families in which cousins married cousins—they found them in Muslim countries in the Middle East.

Research into autism genetics has been hampered by the difficulty of finding autistic and non-autistic siblings in the same family to study. To get around this, the new study investigated 88 families from the Middle East, Turkey and Pakistan, where the average number of children is much larger than in Europe and America. The scientists also concentrated on families in which the mother and father were cousins, which is a risk factor for autism.

In five families, they found large segments of the genome were missing. Non-autistic members still had one working copy of these regions, but those with autism lacked working copies altogether.

I suggest genetic researchers check these Minnesota Somali families many of whom may be linked by a few polygamous fathers—an Islamic cultural practice creeping into America with the refugees—and a surefire way to spread a defective gene.   Or if political correctness hinders that line of questioning, at least check the cousins marrying cousins angle.