Tag: Immigrant health

Another warning on polio outbreaks among refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This time from The Lancet medical journal.  Story from Bloomberg News via Canada’s National Post:

Polio, the crippling virus driven to the brink of extinction, may return to Europe as regional conflicts undermine a US$10-billion eradication campaign.

Health worker vaccinating child in Afghanistan. AFP

Polio’s re-appearance in Syria last month after a 14 year absence raises the risk that the virus will hitch a ride on unsuspecting refugees fleeing the country and return to areas, including Europe, that have been polio-free for decades, according to a letter published in the The Lancet medical journal Friday.

“Polio is making a comeback,” Martin Eichner, a professor at the University of Tuebingen who co-authored the letter to The Lancet, said Friday. Eichner and a German colleague warned that the vaccine used in the U.S. and Europe offers only partial protection against infection and called for heightened screening of sewage systems near refugee settlements in Turkey and Jordan. Syrian war refugees, moreover, have begun arriving in Western Europe, including Sweden and Germany.

Syria isn’t the only area where poliomyelitis, as the disease is formally known, is rearing its head. It has resurfaced in the Horn of Africa as well as in sewage samples in Israel and Egypt.

Muslim extremists killing vaccinators in Pakistan!

Genetic analysis suggests the virus responsible for the cases in Syria is the same as the one found in Israel and Egypt, and came from Pakistan.

[….]

Twenty-two vaccinators have been murdered in Pakistan since December, and militants in North Waziristan have banned vaccination in the area, he said.

The photo is from this story about Pakistan health workers murdered by Muslim fanatics.

Syrian refugees could be bringing Polio to EU

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
British Health System: It’s a good thing we have socialized medicine for the refugees!

From Vaccine News:

An outbreak of acute flaccid paralysis from wild poliovirus in Syria could put European Union Member States at risk for contamination as refugees seek asylum, health officials warned on Thursday.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control urged EU countries to question Syrian refugees about their polio vaccination history and to administer vaccinations to anyone who isn’t inoculated.  [Will fundamentalist Muslims even tell the truth?—ed]

The WHO launched an investigation into an outbreak of AFP cases caused by wild poliovirus in Syria on Oct. 19. Since then, the national reference laboratory in Damascus, Syria, has concluded that the AFP cases were “likely caused by wild poliovirus.”

So far, 22 children have been diagnosed. Five victims are younger than 1-year-old, 13 victims are 1 to 2 years old and 4 victims are older than 2 years old.

Meanwhile, many Syrians have fled the country due to the ongoing conflict, and more had already applied for asylum in the EU before the outbreak. Regional and international public health officials are working to provide vaccinations to Syrians and displaced refugees.

The number of children who received polio vaccinations in Syria dropped from 95 percent in 2002 to 52 percent in 2012.

Photo is from the UK Mirror—-remember the dancing doctors and nurses from the London Olympic games.

Obamacare will help mentally ill refugees say California immigrant health advocates

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here are some snips from the story at New America Media (hat tip: Joanne):

….a public health care worker [Mohamed] who helps refugees from African and Middle-Eastern countries says once Obamacare is launched she will no longer have to witness her clients getting bumped off health care benefits eight months after they arrive in the United States, even as they are still trying to navigate the new culture.  [She is referring to the initial health care that comes with each refugee, thanks to the US taxpayer—ed]

[….]

The ACA [Affordable Care Act] will require insurers to treat psychiatric illness like any other. It will also remove many of the obstacles to fair treatment, Muñoz said.

Mohamed [Amina Sheik Mohamed], program director at UCSD’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, and active in the African and Middle-Eastern refugee communities, said that if refugees can now enroll in Medi-Cal because of its expansion, they need no longer face the short-term health care their refugee status now limits them to.

That aside, Obamacare will allow refugees to access the mental health services they so acutely need, she said.

“Refugees come to the United States with a lot of anxiety and stress,” she pointed out. “They need mental health care.”

Yes they do!  See our ‘health issues’ category (168 previous posts!) for more on refugee mental illness.  For new readers, to learn what other benefits refugees receive in addition to health care, see our Fact Sheet by clicking here.

The photo is from this March 2013 story about Mohamed at KPBS.