Tag: Pakistan

Man from the UK with drug-resistant SARS-related virus had traveled to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Family members have now contracted the disease.

Reports don’t tell us if he himself was an immigrant to the UK, but in light of all of the news lately about multidrug-resistant TB in immigrants crossing borders, here and here, I think I better set an alert for the topic of ‘immigrant health.’

My caption: The annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The world’s largest gathering of deadly viruses. Photo from wikipedia

Drudge has this story today from CBS :

ATLANTA (CBSMiami) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a new warning to state and local health officials about a virus that is related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and appeared for the first time in September 2012.

The virus is a coronavirus, which is the same family of virus as the common cold and SARS. Asia dealt with a SARS outbreak in 2003. The new virus sprang up last year in the Middle East, but has since been seen in Great Britain.

The CDC said a worldwide total of 14 cases have been documented since April 2012 with eight of those cases leading to death. No cases have been reported in the United States thus far.

But, the CDC said the virus has clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. According to the CDC, people traveling to the Arabian Peninsula or neighboring countries would have the highest risk of possible transmission.

Of the three cases seen in Great Britain, one came from a 60-year-old man who had traveled to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Maybe he got it at the Hajj!

Related health alert from the UK today, also via Drudge, drug resistant diseases could be catastrophic.

Pakistan wants the Afghan refugees to go home

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, they are paying them to go back to a safer Afghanistan (provided to them by US blood and treasure).

So much for Muslim charity toward the stranger that we so often hear about.  Pakistan blames the Afghan refugees (some have been there for decades) for crime and terror attacks, according to the LA Times.

Pakistani officials have long expressed their frustration with the lack of progress in repatriating the world’s largest refugee community — Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and later, Taliban rule. Many refugees have lived in Pakistan for more than three decades. Their presence is resented by many Pakistanis, who see the refugees as a source of escalating crime and accuse them of involvement in terror strikes across the country.

The news this morning is that Pakistan has extended the time they have to repatriate to their homeland and is paying them (and upping the anti!) to get the heck out of Pakistan.

They don’t want to go ‘home’ according to an earlier story in the Business Recorder.

From the Business Recorder:

ISLAMABAD: Minister for States and Frontier and Frontier Regions Abbas Khan Afridi on Monday informed the National Assembly that currently sophisticated computerized system was in placed for the registration of Afghan refugees and period for voluntary repatriation of the refugees was extended till June 30.

Replying to a various supplementary questions during Question Hour, he said the repatriation package for the refugees was also enhanced from$ 100 to $150 per returnee in order to encourage and motivate the Afghan refugees.

Earlier, the amount was paid to them in Pakistan, now it was being paid to them in Afghanistan to discourage their re-entrance practice, he added.

The minister said that over 55,000 Afghan refugee families comprising 296,192 individuals (registered refugees) were repatriated during the last four years, bringing the total repatriation to over 3.8 million since 2002.

He said that presently around 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees were in Pakistan and the Prime Minister has recently constituted a Cabinet Committee under the Chairmanship of the SAFRON minister to deal with repatriation of the remaining refugees.

We are bringing Afghan refugees to the US (we’ve resettled over 30,000 already) and I expect that as Obama withdraws our troops you will hear the lament that we ‘broke’ Afghanistan so we have to bring their people here.

Photo from the Business Recorder, here.