And, their treatment expenses are coming out of your wallets! Isn’t diversity beautiful!
See our previous post—-what is Vermont hiding? This CDC info graphic says even Latent TB cases entering the US must be identified and treated. So what is all this costing us?
A spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Health confirms to Breitbart News that “three refugees [have been] diagnosed with TB in Vermont over the past seven months.”
One case was diagnosed in December 2015, and the other two cases were diagnosed in 2016.
No one other than a refugee has been diagnosed with active TB in Vermont during the first six months of 2016, the spokesperson adds.
The stunning admission comes after Breitbart News reported that the number of active TB cases in Vermont tripled from two in 2014 to seven in 2015.
More here.
I don’t want to become an expert on refugee health, but you might be interested if you have some connection to the medical field or are in regular close contact with the refugees newly arriving in the US.
Just now I had a look at the Centers for Disease Control guidelinesfor refugee health screening and what I don’t get is this: refugees are domestically screened between 30 and 90 days of arrival. How many people have interacted or come in contact with a refugee family and then don’t learn for 30 to 90 days that someone in the family has TB (or HIV or parasites or other transmittable health conditions)?
See our ‘health issues’ categorywith over 300 previous posts on the topic.
Michael Patrick Leahy has published one more investigative report on Tuberculosis in the US refugee population. Go to our ‘health issues’ category by clicking here to see his previous reports. Here is the latest, hot off the presses this morning:
Twenty-seven recently resettled refugees were among the 117 cases of active tuberculosis (TB) diagnosed in Wisconsin in 2014 and 2015, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. That makes the Badger State the new refugee TB capital of the United States.
Will we soon have to mass produce up-dated posters like this one from the 1920s to alert the public in refugee resettlement target cities? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TB_poster.jpg
Wisconsin replaces Louisiana as the state with the most reported cases of active TB among recently resettled refugees in the country.
As Breitbart News has reported previously, twenty-one cases of active TB were diagnosed among recently resettled refugees in Louisiana between 2011 and 2015.
Six other states have reported recently resettled refugees have been diagnosed with active TB: Florida (eleven), Colorado (ten), Idaho (seven), Indiana (four), Kentucky (nine in one county), and North Dakota (four in one county).
Wisconsin may not be the actual leader, though. Only eight of the forty nine states that resettle refugees under the federal refugee resettlement program have responded to Breitbart News requests to provide this important public health data, which resettlement agencies are required by law to monitor and report in each state.
Lots more here!
One more HUGE example of the secrecy surrounding the Refugee Admissions Program in America! Endnote:I’m going to ask again if anyone knows if volunteers working with the resettlement contractors are given any information on how to stay safe from health risks associated with refugees coming here directly from the third world.
Watchdog.org had to use public information request laws to try to get the information, but the effort by the Health Dept. to not answer the request is revealing and perhaps worse than just biting the bullet and supplying the information!
The public everywhere is sick of the secrecy surrounding the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program and this is one more reason why!
The buck stops with Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy who has been one of the chief architects and ardent supporters of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program for decades in Washington.
By the way, we have known for years that refugees were permitted entry into the US with latent TB. In fact in our early months writing this blog in 2007, we were stunned to learn about how the large number of TB cases among refugees in Fort Wayne, Indiana were swamping the Allen County Health Dept. However, we, like you, are shocked now to learn that refugees with ACTIVE TB are being permitted entry and quietly treated with your tax dollars. Hereis the latest on the Tuberculosis controversy in Vermont (hat tip: Joanne):
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Epidemiologists at the Vermont Department of Health are concealing the number of refugees with contagious active tuberculosis nearly a month after Watchdog reported that more than one-third of Vermont’s resettled refugees test positive for TB.
Earlier this month, Watchdog revealed that 35 percent of Vermont’s incoming refugees in the past four years tested positive for tuberculosis. How many of those cases are contagious and symptomatic, however, remains a secret, as state epidemiologists and top officials at the Health Department have spent weeks blocking efforts to obtain the data.
Refugees brought to the United States take TB tests as part of comprehensive health screening. For refugees resettled in Vermont, the Department of Health’s Refugee Health Program monitors test results and treats patients who have active TB disease. Unlike latent tuberculosis infection, active TB disease is contagious, symptomatic and even deadly.
According to documents obtained through a public records request, the evasions began May 27, when Watchdog contacted the Health Department to learn how many refugees tested positive for TB in recent years.The inquiry sparked private meetings among state epidemiologists, public health nurses and office staff, who proceeded to conceal the number of contagious active TB disease cases brought to Vermont through the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.
Continue reading here to see the degree to which these health officials charged (presumably) with keeping all Vermonters safe and healthy are attempting to hide data on active TB in the state.
What Watchdog.org has done here is a model for what you should be doing where you live, not just on the subject of refugee health, but also investigate who is pushing resettlement and why among your elected officials (Twin Falls!) and expose them! Find out who is benefiting FINANCIALLY in your town or city!
See our ‘health issues’ category by clicking here. We have hundreds of posts there on issues of immigrant and refugee health (including the refugee mental health treatment you pay for).
It’s getting worse. First we were told only refugees with latent TB are permitted entry into the US, then Michael Patrick Leahy writing at Breitbart reported that, no, active TB is coming in as well. Now, we learn that even a more serious problem could be developing in your towns with multi-drug resistant TB in a few refugees and other immigrants.
We checked our archives and sure enough we reported on several cases of TB in a frightened Sheyboygen, Wisconsin in 2013, here. In 2013, in Sheyboygan Wisconsin, nurses are being instructed in how to take care of themselves when caring for refugees infected with TB. Is this what your “welcoming” community has to look forward to? http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/07/18/200871130/tuberculosis-outbreak-shakes-wisconsin-city Pay attention to the fact that you (local and state taxpayers) are footing the bill for all of the meds! Isn’t diversity worth it though!
Hot off the presses at Breitbart:
Two refugees and a foreign student on a visa brought multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2009 and 2011, according to a 2014 article in an epidemiology publication written with the cooperation of the doctors who treated them.
The introduction of MDR TB to the United States represents a serious public health threat, since its successful treatment is uncertain and very expensive. Active TB can usually be treated successfully in six to nine months at a cost of $17,000 per patient, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), but MDR TB treatment costs more than $150,000 per patient and can take between 20 and 26 months.
[….]
Twenty cases of MDR TB, all foreign-born, were diagnosed in Wisconsin over the eight year period between 2005 and 2012, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Twelve of these cases were from the Hmong people in Laos (though Case 2 in the 2014 article was categorized as “drug resistant,” not formally MDR-TB, it was probably included among these 12, as well as Case 2’s “close household contact”), four were from India (including Case 3 from the 2014 article), one was from Burma (including Case 1 from the 2014 article), and one each were from China, Ethiopia, and Nepal.
State and local taxpayers in Wisconsin paid for the treatment of these twenty foreign-born cases of MDR TB. At a cost of $150,000 per patient, the total cost was an estimated $3 million.
Leahy has much more, I’ve only snipped a bit of the detailed report.
Let me ask all of you who plan to volunteer to help the new refugees as they arrive in Asheville, NC, Rutland, VT, Reno, NV, Charleston, WV, Ithaca, NY, Fayetteville, AR, Missoula, Montana and Radford, Virginia, do you know how to protect yourselves? And, how good is your local health department? Is it ready for this?
See our health issues category with 306 previous posts cataloged there.
Michael Patrick Leahy has released another in a series of investigative reports on Tuberculosis and other communicable diseases permitted entry to the US with the refugee flow to 48 states (and soon to one more—Montana).
And, if you are saying to yourself, sheesh Idaho again!, remember this is happening where you live or will happen where you live. Wyoming is the only state that has been wise enough to stay out of the whole messy business. Limon runs the major federal contracting agency resettling refugees in Twin Falls through her subcontractor the College of Southern Idaho. She was Bill Clinton’s director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and in this bio her affiliation with USCRI still lists USCRI’s previous names—why did they change their name twice, does anyone know? http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=11313421&privcapId=6877563
Here is the Leahy story at Breitbart yesterday that up until the Islamic terror attack in Turkey yesterday was the lead story on Drudge:
Seven refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) were diagnosed shortly after their resettlement in Idaho between 2011 and 2015, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
This makes Idaho the seventh state to confirm to Breitbart News that recently arrived refugees have been diagnosed with active TB.
The other states in which recently arrived refugees have been diagnosed with active TB include: Louisiana (twenty-one), Florida (eleven), Colorado, (ten), Indiana (four), Kentucky (where nine were diagnosed in one county), and North Dakota (where four refugees who resided in the United States for less than five years were diagnosed in one county).
Idaho is one of fourteen states that have withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement program where the federal government has hired a voluntary agency (VOLAG) to resettle refugees under the statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program.
In Idaho, the federal government has contracted the Idaho Office for Refugees a division of the large non-profit known as Janus, to run the program.Janus is one of the largest organizations within the lucrative and politically connected refugee resettlement industry, which is paid more than $1 billion per year by the federal government.
Continue reading here (and to access links).
See our complete ‘health issues’ category herewhich includes posts on Leahy’s previous work.
About tricking the public with names and name changes in the refugee resettlement industry
The Idaho Office for Refugees is a name that is meant to confuse you. The state government of Idaho does not have a refugee office. Jannus Inc. (a non-profit group) runs the program in Idaho (a Wilson-Fish state). Until recently Jannus Inc. was Mountain States Group. So if you are looking for data, or researching grants, etc., your search becomes more challenging as they change names like they change their underwear. (LOL! they say the new name is in honor of the Roman God Janus, hmmmm?)
As a matter of fact, the major federal contractor in Twin Falls, Idaho—the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (one of nine)—has changed its name several times over the years. See our post from 2009 in which we mention their previous names. Why is this name-changing so prevalent? My first guessis that they screwed up somewhere (business-wise, or PR-wise) and need a clean slate on which to build a new brand.
