WTH! Too many people in US STILL have TB! Well, gee, that might be because we keep bringing in new cases!
Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart continued his excellent series of investigative reports on the incidence of active TB in the US refugee population with this report from Virginia. Yesterday we told you about two other Leahy articles on TB in refugees earlier this week, see here. Leahyon this Virginia revelation:
The state of Virginia refuses to track the number of refugees it resettles who are diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB).
[….]
… the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) does not think it should be a priority to track foreign-born TB cases by category, as do 44 states who have provided the CDC with that data since 2012 (Tennessee became the 45th state to do so in 2014) in its annual Report on Tuberculosis in the United States.
“The Virginia Department of Health does not collect the data you have requested,” a spokesperson for VDH responded when Breitbart asked to know the immigration status upon first entry of the 168 foreign-born residents of Virginia diagnosed with active TB in 2015.
More here.
For more on refugee health see our ‘Health issues’ category by clicking here. And, remember readers, your tax dollars pay for expensive TB medication (if the case is discovered!).
BTW, still have had no one tell me if volunteers, working with resettlement agencies, are trained to spot symptoms or are educated on how to protect themselves and their families from becoming infected with TB when they work with newly arrived refugees.
You probably got this news the other day at Drudge, but I am posting this and another article about Tuberculosis by Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbartto keep our ‘Health Issues’ category up to date. If you’ve never scrolled through it, we have cataloged 321 posts in the last 9 years on the topic of refugee/immigrant health problems. Some of our very first posts in the category were about costly Tuberculosis treatment for refugees in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. TB Symptoms don’t usually show up in the first year of infection. https://www.physio-pedia.com/File:Symptoms_of_TB.png Hereis Leahy three days ago. BTW the refugee industry is quick to tell you that immigrants with latent TB are permitted entry to the US, but pay attention because these are refugees with activeTB.
Between 2012 and 2015, 1,565 refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in the United States, according to annual reports published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
The CDC data, which has been public but obscure until now, shows that the number of refugees diagnosed with active TB in recent years is more than three times greater than previously reported by any media outlet.
The number of refugees diagnosed with TB in the United States has increased every year since 2012, the first year the CDC began publishing data on foreign-born cases of the disease by category, when 358 were diagnosed. In 2013, 396 refugees were diagnosed with TB. The following year, 2014, 402 refugees were diagnosed with TB, and in 2015, the number of refugees diagnosed with TB rose again to 409. Data for 2016 has not yet been reported.
Continue reading here.
And, then yesterday, Leahy, who has become an expert on the Tuberculosis problem growing in America, reported that a middle school student in South Carolina has been diagnosed with active TB. School officials are working hard to keep the story tamped down. I wondered, when I read this, if parents at the school were told to keep their mouths shut about the status of the student—is he/she foreign born? Is he or she a refugee? Breitbart:
A student at Castle Heights Middle School in Rock Hill, South Carolina was diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in December.
Officials with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) and Rock Hill Schools, part of the York County Public School System, are not disclosing the patient’s country of origin.
“We can’t provide any more information about the individual that was confirmed with the case of tuberculosis,” a spokesperson for the South Carolina DHEC tells Breitbart News.
“We are in the middle of our contact investigations,” the spokesperson adds.
LOL! Leahy’s reputation must be spreading!
“Your reporting on Breitbart.com implies that you will attempt to use this data to indicate the confirmed case of TB is from a foreign-born student connected in some way to the influx of refugees into the United States over the past few years,” Rock Hills Schools spokesperson Frost adds.
“The identity of the student is and will remain private as we are bound by federal law (FERPA) to not release medical or educational information about students. As such, we cannot confirm or provide the birth location of the student involved in this case,” he notes.
Continue reading here. Leahy has much more including many links to related information.
I’ve said it more than once, and will keep saying it: If Islamic terrorism doesn’t frighten you, this (sending your kids to school were Tuberculosis could be found) should! And, would someone who works for a refugee agency tell us if volunteers are trained to spot symptoms in the refugees they are helping and are given any instructions on how to keep themselves safe?
That is what we would like to know! Michael Patrick Leahy of Breitbart is on the case. I know most of you are reading Breitbart(right!), but I wanted to be sure we get this latest Tuberculosis news posted to keep our ‘Health Issues’ category up to date.
Also, before you read what Leahy says about this Nebraska case, see our recent post on Nebraska here(3 days ago). Leahy at Breitbart:
A student enrolled at Benson Magnet High School, one of seven high schools in the Omaha, Nebraska Public Schools system, was diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) in November.
Health officials said they will now have to test 195 students and 12 faculty members who may have been exposed.
Two hundred thirty seven of Benson Magnet High School’s 1,273 students, or 18.6 percent, are refugees, according to Omaha Public School’s District English Language Learner/Refugee Report, 2015-16.
Officials with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services and the Douglas County Public Health Department are withholding whether the student was foreign-born or American-born.
A number of Omaha’s refugee students were born in countries burdened by TB; Myanmar/Burma (617), Nepal (186), Somalia (140), and Bhutan (84).
As Breitbart News reported previously, foreign-born residents of Nebraska accounted for 82 percent of all cases of TB diagnosed in the state in 2014, much higher than the national average of 66 percent….
I’m wondering if the problems with the US Refugee Admissions Program will hit home once families in resettlement towns and cities find that their kids have to be tested for TB!
And, I’ve wondered for a long time if volunteers who work with refugees are given instructions on how to stay safe and keep their families safe when interfacing with newly arrived refugees. Does anyone know? (For new readers: Yes we admit refugees with TB.)
Our ‘Health Issues’ category (320 previous posts!) is here.
I recently traveled through Nebraska to meet citizens and see some of the meatpacking towns under stress from large numbers of refugees who have been placed there mostly by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the Ethiopian Community Development Council to supply multinational meat giants with a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor. I loved this engraving above the door of the Nebraska state capitol building in Lincoln.
In addition to the economic, social and cultural strains on the communities there it seems that now worries about the increased rate of active Tuberculosis will be concerning residents. Here is Michael Patrick Leahy today at Breitbart with another of his investigative reports on Tuberculosis in American towns. Add the cost of treating sick people to the burgeoning cost of refugee resettlement.
Eighty-two percent of the active tuberculosis (TB) cases diagnosed in Nebraska in 2014, that’s 31 out of 38, were foreign-born, according to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.
Only six percent of the 1.9 million residents of the Cornhusker State are foreign-born.
2014’s 38 active TB cases represented an 80 percent increase in active TB cases in the state in one year, up from 21 in 2013.
[….]
The Tuberculosis Program Report 2014, published by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, explains the role the state’s foreign-born population played in this increase in active TB in the state and the difficulties involved in dealing with that population when it comes to TB control:
Although Nebraska has an overall low incidence of TB, the cases continue to be difficult to treat because of the high percentage of foreign-born population that comprise Nebraska’s TB morbidity and also because of the complexity of the cases. The language and cultural barriers of the foreign-born population require a tremendous amount of public health resources to ensure a successful TB treatment outcome.
[….]
As many as 10,000 of the foreign-born residents of the state originally came as part of the refugee resettlement program and work primarily in low wage jobs in the burgeoning local meat-packing industry. Recently, the countries of origin for those refugees, the number of which increased from 764 in FY 2012 to 997 in FY 2013 to 1,076 in FY 2014, have had high rates of TB.
The vast majority of these new arrivals came from countries with high burdens of TB. Six hundred and sixty-two refugees in FY 2012 and 785 refugees in FY 2013 came from two such countries, Burma and Bhutan. Nine hundred and forty-eight refugees in FY 2014 came three countries–Burma, Bhutan, and Iraq.
Earlier refugees arrived from Somalia and Sudan.
Continue reading here.
And then go to our ‘health issues category’ here for much more on TB and other diseases and mental health problems associated with refugees.
No time to do this justice as I’m dashing out to appointments, but wanted to get this posted quickly….. More newsin Breitbart’s series on Tuberculosis in the US refugee population. This is an update of previous information on Colorado. By the way, Colorado is a so-called Wilson Fish state, one of more than a dozen states where elected officials have virtually no say in how taxpayer money is expended on refugees there. Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper: We love our refugees in Colorado! I wonder did he go to Davos to schmooze with the big international corporations backing the free flow of immigrant labor around the world? A little TB here and there shouldn’t stand in the way of making money! Right?
From Michael Patrick Leahy and just breaking on Drudge:
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment admits that sixteen refugees were diagnosed with active TB between 2011 and 2014.
The admission comes one month after Breitbart News reported ten recently arrived refugees in Colorado were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB). Between 2011 and 2014, 16 out of 7,754 refugees were diagnosed with active TB at the time of their initial medical screening.
[….]
Colorado is one of fourteen states that have withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement program. Under the statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program, the federal government has hired a voluntary agency (VOLAG) to run the program there.
Though Tennessee, another state that has withdrawn from the federal refugee resettlement program, is suing the federal government on Tenth Amendment grounds over the resettlement of refugees in the Volunteer State, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is unlikely to add his state as a plaintiff in that lawsuit.
Continue reading here. Are health care providers and volunteers who work with refugees being briefed on health threats from newly arrived refugees? That is what I want to know!
This is post number 313 in our health issues category.
