http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3994584.html

June 23, 2006, 10:35AM


Border-area health conditions 'a crisis,' medical experts say
Conference finds counties closest to Mexico have high rates of disease
By SAMANTHA LEVINE
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - If the 24 U.S. counties along the Mexican border were combined into the nation's 51st state, it would be among the poorest and least healthy in the United States, according to lawmakers and health experts who spoke at a border health conference on Thursday.

The conditions along the border are something "we should be ashamed of," said Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The conference, convened by the Texas Medical Association and Texas lawmakers, painted a dismal picture of health conditions in the southern reaches of the four states that border Mexico, with rates of tuberculosis, hepatitis, obesity, hypertension, diabetes and infectious disease that far outpace the rest of the country.

Compounding the problems are increasing shortages of doctors and nurses, a situation made worse by inadequate federal reimbursement for health care providers who care for the high numbers of underinsured or uninsured individuals along the border, the experts said.

"The result ... is that communities along the border suffer from health problems common to developing nations," said Don Hawkins, vice president of the National Association of Community Health Centers. "It is a crisis."

Nearly 20 percent of residents along the border, a partly agricultural region with many immigrants, live in poverty, compared with an average of 13 percent across the United States, he said.

More than a third of border residents lack health insurance, more than twice the U.S. average, and more than 60 percent of the counties are federally designated as having a serious shortage of doctors.

samantha.levine@chron.com