Tag: tuberculosis

Sheboygan TB outbreak—it’s not about badgers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Huh?

I’ve noticed a trend in reporting about immigrants and refugees—unless they are cute kids or wholesome-looking young adults, avoid the photos.  How many times have I seen immigrant food stamp fraud cases reported and the accompanying photo is the ‘scales of justice’ or just a photo of an EBT card?  I would say about half of the stories I come across involving immigrant criminals use some other illustration than the person’s face!

British badgers taking the blame for TB?

So, when I saw this story about Tuberculosis in the UK  on the rise in one section of London (Redbridge) due to the large immigrant population, illustrating the story with a photo of a badger seems the ultimate diversion in the main stream media’s politically-correct avoidance of the truth.

Here is the story from the Ilford Recorder.

It seems badgers may be responsible for bovine TB, but the important part of the story is this:

A new health group is fighting the spread of tuberculosis (TB) in Redbridge after it was revealed to have one of the worst rates of the disease in London.

The group was set up by Redbridge Council, which is now in charge of public health in the borough, to co-ordinate a three-year programme to raise awareness of the disease in vulnerable residents.

[…..]

More than 56 residents per every 100,000 in the borough had the disease last year, when 157 new cases were recorded.

The average rate for England is just 14 and 42 in London. Most sufferers were born outside of the UK and aged between 25 and 44.

The Greens have jumped in to defend the badgers and a spokeswoman reminds the public that this is human to human TB and doesn’t involve the scapegoated badgers.

“Although Redbridge has one of the worst rates of tuberculosis in London, residents should remember that it is a separate strain of TB, transmitted only between human beings.”

So you think it’s just ‘over there’!

I bet you missed this story from Sheboygan, Wisconsin two months ago.  I did, but reader ‘pungentpeppers’ didn’t.

Tuberculosis Outbreak Shakes Wisconsin City

Looking crisp and official in his khaki-colored sheriff’s department polo shirt, Steve Steinhardt says Sheboygan, Wis., is a pretty good place to be a director of emergency services.

“Nothing bad happens here,” he says, knocking on wood. Unless, that is, you count the tuberculosis outbreak that struck the orderly Midwestern city of 50,000 this spring and summer.

“I never expected TB to be one of the bigger emergencies I’d face when I got into this field,” Steinhardt says.

Sheboygan County officials have had to scramble to contain it. At the height of the crisis, the county activated its emergency operation center — a step usually reserved for major fires, floods and tornadoes.

It began with an immigrant family (apparently refugees).

The Sheboygan outbreak came to light on April 11. The first case was a woman at the center of a large, close-knit family. Health officials decline to identify the family, but they say the people were part of an immigrant community, a common theme in most current TB outbreaks in the U.S.

Sheboygan is home to sizable populations from Mexico and Southeast Asia, where TB is common. Asian immigrants make up half of Wisconsin’s recent TB cases. Refugees among the Hmong people of Laos and Thailand have been among the most difficult to treat cases.

Who will pay for all this?  Obama?

But the really bad news was that the woman at the epidemic’s center had a TB strain resistant to at least two of the main drugs used to treat the infection. That’s known as , or MDR-TB. It’s especially hard to cure. The antibiotics can cost around $300,000 for a single case.

For new readers, see our category on ‘health issues’ (here) and see especially this shocking story from last year about the IOM readying drug-resistant TB cases to come to the US.

More Burmese going to Ft. Wayne, Indiana

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Chain migration to Ft Wayne has resumed after a hiatus for Burmese refugees living in camps in Southeast Asia.  More Tuberculosis coming too?

Why was the program called “family reunification” suspended for years?  Fraud! Lying! Cheating!

From the Journal Gazette (hat tip: Robin):

FORT WAYNE – Fort Wayne might see a larger influx of Burmese refugees this year than in any year since 2009.

The U.S. State Department says that Catholic Charities of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese has been approved to resettle as many as 170 refugees here during the fiscal year that began in October. That would be the highest number since 297 arrived in calendar year 2009. Only 54 came to town in calendar year 2012.

The figure is on the rise because family-reunification refugees have been reinstated for fiscal 2013. U.S. authorities suspended those Burmese resettlements in 2008 after a rash of fraudulent applications, but authorities have begun requiring DNA tests for applicants who claim to have immediate family in America.

“Most of the Burmese who are coming to this community are coming because of family,” said Holly Chaille, director of Catherine Kasper Place, a local ministry that assists immigrants and refugees.

Other refugee categories include ethnic minorities and individuals needing protection. Allen County was home to about 3,900 Burmese in the 2010 census. Only four U.S. metropolitan areas counted more Burmese at the time.

But things are improving in Burma!  Didn’t Obama just visit there.  This is what is so confounding about Refugee Resettlement.  We bring hordes of “refugees” here at enormous cost to the taxpayer, not to mention the social upheaval for American towns and cities (cultural upheaval for the immigrants too), and then the situation improves in the country from which the refugees left, but then most don’t go home.

About 140,000 Burmese reportedly live in refugee camps in Thailand, thanks to decades of repressive military rule in neighboring Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Gradual democratic reforms in Myanmar are expected to lure many expatriates back home eventually.

For new readers:  We have many many posts here at RRW about problems in Ft Wayne/Allen County.  The difficult situation there first came to our attention in 2007 when the county health department was trying to cope with all the TB cases* coming in (“…50 percent of refugees arrive with TB infection and must be tested, treated and tracked.”).  Eventually the Health Dept. got a little extra funding from Washington to help them cope.

Then who can forget the laundromat spitting/urinating episode, here.

Go here for our entire archive (dozens of posts) on Ft. Wayne.   All of the problems in Ft. Wayne pushed former US Senator Richard Lugar to ask for a GAO study which was very critical of the program here.  No sign that that study changed a damn thing!

* Speaking of TB cases, there has been a run on this old post in the last few days about a refugee dying from TB in a Tyson Foods meatpacking plant.  Readers, this is no joke!  We are bringing in refugees with active multi-drug-resistant TB!

One more thing!  Citizens of Ft. Wayne should be watching for the arrival of Rohingya (Burmese Muslims) in the mix with the Christians.  They hated each other in Burma and in the camps but somehow the resettlement contractors think that since they are going into the magical American melting pot they will come out liking each other.  Remember what happened in Utah.