Each illegal immigrant with MDR-TB can infect 10-30 people
TB Or Not TB: The Alien Health Threat
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 8/29/2007
Illegal Immigration: An alien with an infectious form of tuberculosis shows that border control is not merely an economic or national security issue. It's a medical emergency bringing new meaning to the phrase "yearning to breathe free."
Related Topics: Immigration | Health Care
Francisco Santos, 17, an alien of undetermined status, walked into the emergency room of the Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville, Ga., last Friday with symptoms of what was diagnosed as a case of active, contagious tuberculosis.
At first, Santos, who listed his birthplace as Mexico, refused treatment and threatened to walk out and head back to his home country. Authorities had to obtain a court order to hold him in isolation at a medical facility in the county jail.
How and where Santos contracted the disease is unknown. Perhaps it was from one of the 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S., with more arriving each day, unscreened and unchecked for infectious diseases.
According to the Ellis Island Museum, some 12 million aliens legally sought entry into the U.S. between 1892 and 1954, literally in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. But before they could set foot in America proper, they were given at least a cursory medical exam. Those suspected of carrying an infectious disease were held until public health officials could determine if they posed a health risk.
Those days are over. A 2005 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association documented one of the consequences of illegal immigration — the reappearance of infectious diseases long thought eradicated or under control.
In the article, co-written with California health officials, Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported the emergence in the U.S. of a particularly virulent, multi-drug-resistant form of tuberculosis known as MDR-TB.
Evidence of this drug-resistant TB had surfaced in 38 of 61 California health jurisdictions. Those infected were said to be four times as likely to die from the disease and twice as likely to "transmit the disease to others" as other tuberculosis patients.
This study confirmed the findings of a report in the spring 2005 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. "The influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences," wrote Madeleine Pelner Cosman, adding that "many illegals harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis."
As Cosman noted, tuberculosis had largely disappeared from America, thanks to vastly improved hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as isoniazid and rifampin. And until recently, MDR-TB was mainly confined to Mexico.
Each illegal immigrant with MDR-TB can infect 10 to 30 people, who will not immediately show symptoms.
Due to the veritable flood of illegal immigrants who are not tested for disease or required to provided proof of good health (as legal entrants are), mosquito-borne diseases are also re-emerging as a major U.S. health issue.
Dengue fever is exceptionally rare in America, though common in Ecuador, Peru, Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Mexico. Not long ago there was a virulent outbreak of dengue fever in Webb County, Texas, which borders Mexico.
Legal immigrants must demonstrate that they are free of communicable diseases and drug addiction to qualify for lawful permanent residency green cards. Illegal aliens who are sick simply cross our borders medically unexamined, free to infect those they come in contact with, until they show up in a taxpayer-subsidized emergency room.
Illegal immigration is not only a political and social problem, but a medical one as well, and failure to control our borders could literally make you sick.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/edit ... 0290405244
To all of our future elected Officials
Send a message to the next elected president by going after Presedente Boosh
We will not give up our soverenty or allow a corrupt president to NOT ENFORCE the laws that were made by a hell of a lot of people that were a hell of a lot smarter than his goony goo goo A_ _
Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment, Empeachment,
