Tag: refugee health

Celebrate diversity at World Refugee Day today (diversity of diseases returning to US)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

World Refugee Day 2016
http://tinyurl.com/zl6bcuy

In addition to Islamic terrorism fears we have, everyone needs to remember that as the Open Borders movement encourages the migration of millions around the world, fears that diseases, long believed eradicated in the civilized world, are returning.
So if you aren’t worried about being an unlucky soul in a terrorist attack, consider that you could meet these diseases wherever you live (and so could your kids in public schools in hundreds of US cities and towns).
From Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart who has been reporting on the established medical community’s silence on the growing threat, and refugee program administrators in many states keeping this information from the general public:

“Six diseases that were recently near eradication are making a comeback in the United States, as the taxpayer funded refugee resettlement industry launches a propaganda blitz about the so-called World Refugee Day this Monday.

The returning diseases are;

1. Tuberculosis
2. Measles
3. Whooping Cough
4. Mumps
5. Scarlet Fever
6. Bubonic Plague”

For details on each, continue reading here.
See Leahy’s complete series on the threat from communicable diseases entering the US with the refugee population and 300 other stories on refugee/immigrant health issues at RRW’s ‘Health Issues’ category.
Also, you have a state refugee health coordinator (contact information here), why not give them a call and get some information from them about the diseases (and PARASITES!) being resettled in your towns and what is being done to protect the public.
P.S.  You pay for all of this medical care!

Florida: Eleven refugees entered the state with active TB since 2013

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the next in a series of stunning refugee health reports from Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart.

We knew refugees were permitted to move to your towns and cities with latent Tuberculosis but had never heard that cases of active TB were arriving until Leahy began his series.

cuba-unloading-ship-1024x834
Most Americans are shocked to learn that we are still admitting tens of thousands of Cuban “refugees” each year with most going to Florida. Now to add insult to injury we learn that they are not screened for TB and some have arrived with an active form of the communicable disease. Photo: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/01/05/time-to-end-special-privileges-for-cuban-immigrants/

Do you remember a few years ago the media was going berserk because one guy with active TB flew on a plane somewhere and the news media was going crazy trying to piece together information on where he had been and with whom he sat on the plane.
Well, just think about this, eleven cases were walking around Florida’s mostly Cuban community with active TB in the last couple of years.
So where is the mainstream media now?
Here is Leahy again in a very detailed account of the situation:

Eleven refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) were among more than 111,000 refugees who arrived in Florida during the three years between 2013 and 2015, according to a report the Florida Department of Health recently sent to Breitbart News.

Their active TB status was determined in medical screenings completed within 90 days of their arrival in the Sunshine State.

This news comes barely a week after Breitbart News reported that four refugees with active TB were sent to Indiana in 2015.

[….]

The vast majority of these refugees who arrived in Florida between 2013 and 2015–104,000 of the 111,000– came from Cuba under the “wet-foot, dry-foot policy,” the 1995 “amendment to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. . . [that] gives migrants from Cuba special treatment that no other group of refugees or immigrants receives… [and] puts Cubans who reach U.S. soil on a fast track to permanent residency,” as Dan Moffett reports.

Only a small percentage of these 104,000 Cuban refugees–an estimated total of 3,000–entered as “traditional arrival” refugees, the program through which approximately 70,000 refugees per year enter the United States from over 100 different countries.

If you are confused by the numbers, Leahy explains that the huge number of Cuban supposed “refugees” admitted to the US are given the same special treatment that regular refugees receive.  However, at least the regular refugees have some screening abroad while the Cubans do not.  They can literally walk around in your neighborhoods for weeks before they even get any health screening.
Continue reading here.
This is our 300th post in our ‘health issues’ category.  Some of Leahy’s earlier reports are archived there.
I wonder, are volunteers who work with refugees briefed by the resettlement contractor about what diseases, parasites etc. the refugees might be carrying?

Disease spread by sand fleas arriving in the West with Syrian refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have been following Breitbart and Michael Patrick Leahy’s investigative series on TB in the refugee flow to America, but what about cutaneous leishmaniasis? Is is here yet?
We reported on this awful disease here nearly three years ago.  One more of those joys of diversity!

sand flea disease
A lesion (cutaneous leishmaniasis) on a US soldier. One more reason to take care of America first. Photo: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/220298-clinical

From Al Arabiya:

A disfiguring tropical disease that had been previously been contained in Syria is now reportedly spreading across the Middle East as millions are displaced, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis, which can lead to severe scarring on the face, is a parasitic disease spread by bites from infected sand flies.

The disease regularly goes undiagnosed and untreated.

The disease had been contained in Syria, particularly to regions under ISIS control such as Raqqa, Deir al-Zour and Hasakah.

The ongoing Syrian civil war has devastated the country’s medical facilities and along with the chronic lack of clean water, the situation has created a breeding ground for sand flies the carry the disease.

[….]

“It’s a very bad situation. The disease has spread dramatically in Syria, but also into countries like Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and even into southern Europe with refugees coming in,” Dr. Waleed Al-Salem, one of researchers on the disease, told the Daily Mail.

Visit our health issues category where you can find 298 other posts like this one, including the Breitbart series on Tuberculosis in the US refugee population.
 

Some states are pretty secretive about refugee health data—Tennessee is one of them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Michael Patrick Leahy (Breitbart) continues his series on Tuberculosis and other communicable diseases entering the US with the refugee population with this news from Tennessee.
Citizens of the Volunteer State are not given information about the health status of their new ‘refugee’ neighbors.

President Barack Obama is introduced by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam as he speaks about No Child Left Behind Reform in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Friday, Sept. 23, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican Gov. Haslam, left, with friend. Is the Governor adequately protecting the health and well-being of TN citizens?

We have a tendency to focus on the Islamic terrorism angle with refugees and migrants to the US generally, but in addition to the cost to the taxpayer is this oft-forgotten worry about refugees—-we are very lax about refugee health.
However, if you are a different sort of legal immigrant or adopting kids from abroad, you know how rigorous that health screening is and how many immunizations must be given abroad or immediately upon arrival.
Not so with refugees as we are learning from Leahy’s investigative work.
Breitbart yesterday:

NASHVILLE, Tennessee—Both the Tennessee Department of Health and the VOLAG (voluntary agency) that administers the refugee resettlement program in the Volunteer State, Catholic Charities of Tennessee’s Tennessee Office for Refugees, are failing to make public critical information on refugee tuberculosis (TB) health care.

Breitbart News asked the two organizations to provide the following refugee TB healthcare data, which several other states make public on an annual basis, but neither provided it:

• The percentage of refugees who successfully completed medical screenings within 90 days of their arrival, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
• The percentage of refugees who tested positive for Latent Tuberculosis Infection (LTBI).
• The percentage of refugees who tested positive for LTBI who completed medical treatment.
• The number of refugees who were diagnosed with active TB upon their arrival in Tennessee.

Tennessee is one of fourteen states that have withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement. In those states, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has selected a VOLAG to run the refugee resettlement operations under the statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program.

The Tennessee General Assembly passed a resolution in April to sue the federal government for its operation of the refugee resettlement program on Tenth Amendment grounds. In May, Gov. Haslam chose not to veto the resolution, so a lawsuit is in the works, though Tennessee’s embattled Attorney General Herbert Slatery could raise an objection impacting the Tennessee General Assembly’s standing.

At least seven states that are not part of the Wilson Fish alternative program, California, Utah, Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana, and Florida, regularly report on the health data, tuberculosis and otherwise, of refugees resettled in their states.

Go here for more of this very thorough report.
All of you working in ‘pockets of resistance’ should start checking whether your state collects refugee health data.  There are several diseases and parasites the come in with refugees in addition to TB.
We have 297 previous posts on refugee and immigrant health issues archived at RRW.

Tennessee Measles outbreak first identified at Memphis mosque

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update May 12th:  More here from Leahy at Breitbart.
We have long contended that you may be at greater risk from the health issues related to refugee resettlement than you would be from a catastrophic terrorist attack by a refugee.  See our health issues category with 290! previous posts to see what I mean!
[That said, I do believe that in the long term, the very greatest threat we face from the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees each year is the more gradual, but ultimately more devastating, demographic change (the Hijra) that is necessary for the expansion of Islamic shariah law.]
But, nothing frightens people more in the short term than thinking about their children being exposed to potentially deadly diseases.

Holly Johnson Memphis
Leahy tells us that the Health Department has yet to call Holly Johnson who runs Catholic Charities of Tennessee and is responsible for the refugees entering the state. Wouldn’t she be able to tell them quickly if those infected were in their refugee data base for TN? And, doesn’t she have records on refugees’ immunizations? Here is how to reach Johnson: http://www.cctenn.org/servicedetails.cfm?name=Tennessee%20Office%20for%20Refugees%20-%20About%20Us&pid=14071713565812760-D&id=9

Here is the news at Breitbart.  You can be sure this information would not have come out without relentless digging by Breitbart reporter Michael Patrick Leahy.

The first reported case of a person with measles in the recent Memphis outbreak, which now numbers seven confirmed cases, was at a local mosque on April 15, according to the Shelby County Health Department.

“The first public place where there was a public exposure potentially [to measles] was the Masjid Al-Noor Mosque on April 15,” Dr. Alisa Haushalter, Director of the Shelby County Health Department, tells Breitbart News.

“The mosque is one location we know that individuals who were infectious were during their infectious period, but that’s not necessarily where the first case occurred. I don’t want you to draw conclusions without sufficient information,” she added.

Haushalter acknowledged, however, that the measles outbreak could have originated with an unvaccinated for measles adult or child brought to Tennessee under the federal refugee resettlement program, something she called “a possibility amongst many.”

[….]

Surprisingly, the majority of the more than 70,000 refugees resettled annually across the United States through the federal refugee resettlement program are not required to have been vaccinated for measles prior to their arrival here.

Continue reading here.
If you live in the area, you definitely want to go to the full story because reporter Leahy provides a whole list of locations where you might have come in contact with one of the infectious Measles cases.
I get so steamed when I see stories like this because there is so much our good-for-nothing Congress could do to at least make this program safer if they can’t bring themselves to scrap it altogether!