Category: health issues

Senator Sessions to move to strike HIV provision

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 18th:  Senate did vote to lift the ban on immigrants with HIV, see report here at Blue Ridge Forum.

Update July 14th:  Read the latest information on this issue at America’s Survival, Inc. here.   Today is the best day to call Senators with your opinon.

Urgent notice:  The word is that Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will move to strike a provision in S. 2731 when it reaches the floor as early as tomorrow, Monday, July 14th.   As I reported yesterday, this provision would allow immigrants with HIV/AIDS to enter the US and receive government (read taxpayer) supported medical treatment. 

Critics believe it will serve as a huge magnet to further illegal immigration, and fuel more demands for legal immigration.  Also, foreigners getting into the US and seeking asylum could also presumably then ask for medical care.   I suppose it’s also possible for any HIV positive foreigner entering the US on a tourist visa  to ask for treatment for AIDS.    Refugees can already enter the US with HIV/AIDS.

Senator Sessions was the leader in last summer’s defeat of the McCain/Kennedy Amnesty bill.  It will take 60 votes in the Senate to remove the HIV (come to America one and all for free medical care) provision.

Congress to authorize $50 billion for disease programs, allow immigrants with HIV to enter US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 18th:   Passed by the Senate by a wide margin, see report here at Blue Ridge Forum (including link to  how they voted).

Urgent, July 14th:  Read the latest on this issue at America’s Survival, Inc. here.  Today is the best day to express your opinion to your Senators.

Your tax dollars:

Interesting that this information should come on the heels of our Africa post yesterday.  Hat tip:  Richard at Blue Ridge Forum.    In answer to a commenter yesterday, we do send enormous aid to countries around the world to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, but $50 billion over 5 years is way beyond anything I even imagined.

S.2731 goes to the Senate floor on Monday and is expected to be signed into law by September because it is supported by the Bush Administration  (well, maybe its a tad bit more than the Bush proposal of $30 billion, but what’s $20 billion here or there).

Here is the kicker (if $50 billion of our tax dollars wasn’t already) from the Congressional Budget Office:

….enacting S. 2731 would increase direct spending [no kidding].  The bill would allow immigrants with HIV/AIDS to enter the United States. CBO estimates that providing certain benefits to those immigrants and their children would increase direct spending by less than $500,000 in 2010 and by $83 million over the 2010-2018 period.

Refugees are already coming here with HIV (and TB for that matter) despite the ban on foreigners with the disease from traveling or immigrating to the US.  This bill would allow all immigrants to enter the US with HIV and be treated at taxpayer expense.  I don’t think it takes a genius to see how this opens the door wide to more immigrants (including illegal immigrants) who will rush the gates and become dependent on our already overburdened health care system.

Read the entire CBO report here.

British author campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Blulitespecial sent me this link within moments of my nice chat over at this post written about honor kilIings in early June.   The commenters there asked me not to use the word “heathen” in connection with anything to do with Muslims because it offended our readers Scandinavian religious heritage.  LOL!  I’ll honor their wishes and describe FGM as savagery and not heathen behavior.

Also, check out this post where we had a comment (no.7) earlier today on FGM.   The subject is obviously a hot one.

Now, back to the British author’s campaign.   Read the whole article about how Ruth Rendell has worked the subject of mutilation of a little girl into a novel soon to be published entitled, “Not in the Flesh.”    Rendell discusses how difficult it is to stop the practice in the UK because it is so secretive.  

Secretive, yes, but here is what I think is the real reason—no one wants to offend Muslim refugees and immigrants by talking about it.  The article describes the practice as coming mostly with immigrants from the Horn of Africa.  There is not one mention of any connection to Islam.   Granted some who are not Muslims practice this mutilation, but the majority of the practitioners are Muslims.

This politically correct tiptoeing around FGM (and other similar abuses) for fear of offending will be the death of us.

South African TB patients riot

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While I’m on the subject of infectious diseases this morning, here is a frightening story from South Africa thanks to blulitespecial. 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Authorities increased security Friday at a tuberculosis hospital where patients with drug-resistant forms of the disease went on a rampage to protest prison-like conditions.

Twenty-two patients were arrested Wednesday, accused of public violence and assault after they pelted staff with stones and vandalized equipment. But the local police station and prison refused to admit them because of fears of the highly infectious disease. Instead, they were returned to the hospital.

The Jose Pearson hospital, near the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, treats about 300 patients. Many have multidrug-resistant TB and the even more dangerous extensively drug-resistant TB, which is very difficult and expensive to treat. Those with drug-resistant strains are supposed to stay in the hospital for six months to two years, living in isolated wards surrounded by barbed wire and security guards.

South African authorities have reluctantly resorted to enforced confinement of patients with drug-resistant TB because of fears that it might otherwise spread through the community. TB is an airborne bacteria and can be spread easily through coughing or sneezing.

The country is gripped by a tuberculosis crisis, which is feeding off the AIDS epidemic and striking the weakened immune system of victims. Nearly 60 percent of South African TB patients have AIDS. The emergence of drug-resistant TB strains — often the result of not sticking to the standard six-month course of treatment — has worsened patients’ chances of survival.

Why am I telling you this, because as the “rainbow nation” implodes (I wonder if that was discussed at the star-studded Mandela birthday bash this week) we are going to be pressured to take refugees newly created by the violence against immigrants in South Africa.

We are already admitting refugees with HIV and TB.  And, I will bet you a buck that the refugees that roam from city to city are not sticking with their six-month long treatment regime and that the volags are not following up on these people.    A Somali refugee died of TB in a Tyson’s plant in Emporia, KS last year.  Bet you didn’t hear that in the news.

Chris Coen weighs in on World Relief and Fort Wayne

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Earlier this month we reported on a volag “cat fight” going on in Ft. Wayne, IN.  It seems that volag World Relief (Corporation of National Association of Evangelicals) is trying to horn in on Catholic Charities lucrative territory in Ft. Wayne.  

As we have reported many times on this blog, these agencies are paid by the head to resettle refugees and so they are often competitive.   In the case of Ft. Wayne there are huge numbers of Burmese going to that city which has put out the refugee welcome mat.   Those refugees want to bring family members to Ft. Wayne, and refugees in camps in Thailand also request resettlement in Ft. Wayne because they want to live near people like themselves.

This week the Journal Gazette in Ft. Wayne published this letter (scroll down) from Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees: 

Refugee agencies rife with problems

I saw the editorial “Helping refugees”  regarding World Relief’s proposal to open an office in Fort Wayne. I don’t know whether its presence in Fort Wayne will be good for all or not, but my experience with World Relief has not been positive. I am an independent volunteer assisting refugees since 2001. I started a group to monitor the U.S. refugee resettlement program with a small group of volunteers in 2002.

We found refugees who were being neglected and abused by their World Relief agency in 2003-05 north of Tampa, Fla. That refugee program was subsequently shuttered by the Department of State in 2006 because of the neglect of the refugees.

World Relief also seems to have some irregularities in its accounting.

In fairness to World Relief, though, there seem to be quite a few irregularities and neglect of refugees in the U.S Refugee Resettlement Program. There is also extensive documentation of Catholic Charities and the other eight national refugee resettlement agencies neglecting refugees. The State Department has done very little to clean up the problems.

CHRISTOPHER COEN Friends of Refugees Minneapolis

I have on my desk a GAO (General Accounting Office) investigative report on World Relief from 2004.  The report is highly critical of the volag which could not properly account for over $2 million in federal funds.  I don’t know if they have cleaned up the shoddy accounting practices or not.

One interesting little bit in the report was that when refugee numbers declined dramatically in the years immediately following 9/11, World Relief spent more federal dollars than the GAO thought reasonable.  I’m going to bet however that all the volags had a shopping spree during this time because the federal government responded to their plea for funding at the same level as pre-September 11th because the volags complained that they needed to keep offices open and paying staff in anticipation of a return to the higher number of refugees.     Bottomline is that we taxpayers paid for all these non-profits to stay in business even though the refugee numbers were extremely low for a couple of years.

A related matter appeared in the Journal Gazette in mid-June.

The Health Department in Ft. Wayne has been financially strapped due to the huge number of refugees that need vacinations and treatment for HIV and TB.   Buried in another article about outdoor cooking rules is this information:

Waldron [Health Dept. Administrator] said the county commissioners have indicated they will approve $2 million toward relocation of the infectious disease clinic.

With the growing demands in refugee care, the health department needs additional space, and commissioners have asked the department to explore existing clinic sites or other buildings that could be used by the health department. 

But, what can you do?   As I said earlier Ft. Wayne has put out the word that it is a “welcoming” city.