CDC abandons public health in favor of politics: Disease being spread through illegal migration thanks to stunning lack of disease screening

Thursday, June 02, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: CDC, TB screening, migrants

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(NaturalNews) A leading healthcare advocacy group is calling out the Centers for Disease Control for allowing refugees to enter the United States without first screening and treating them for latent tuberculosis.

Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, noted that seven of the CDC's own public health experts said that those screenings "would potentially save millions of dollars and contribute to United States TB elimination goals," in research that was published in December, Breitbart News reported.

"Admitting people who might cause an epidemic makes no sense whatsoever from a public health standpoint," Orient told Breitbart in an interview.

"It suggests that those who favor it do not care about the cost in suffering, death, and expense to Americans," Orient said, adding that she is in agreement with the public health experts currently or formerly employed at the CDC who concluded that the screenings and successful treatment of those who test positive is the proper public health policy for the U.S.

'It's not clear treatment is even effective'

That said, the political leadership at the CDC doesn't appear to be following the very screening and treatment recommendations made by its own experts. Breitbart News went on to report that, as of this writing, the agency had failed to respond as to when or whether the agency planned to change course.

"If for humanitarian reasons we wish to help people fleeing persecution, there is still no need to release them into the general population of susceptible individuals. Officials who place politics above the health of Americans need to be held accountable and removed from positions of authority," Orient said.

In the December 2015 study, the seven health experts from the CDC's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine concluded that:

"Implementing LTBI [latent tuberculosis infection] screening and treatment for United States bound refugees from countries with high or moderate LTBI prevalence would potentially save millions of dollars and contribute to United States TB elimination goals. These estimates are conservative since secondary transmission from tuberculosis cases in the United States was not considered in the model."

At least one study author who recommended screening and treatment of latent TB refugees bound for the U.S. is no longer affiliated with the agency, Breitbart reported.

"Tuberculosis is one of the most lethal infectious diseases in history. It is easily transmitted, say on a public bus. Increasingly, it is becoming highly resistant to all our antibiotics," Dr. Orient said.

"The course of treatment is at best lengthy, and for resistant forms costly and toxic. Isolation of infected persons is essential to keep this plague from spreading. It is not even clear that treatment of latent infection in persons from regions where multiple-drug resistant TB is prevalent is even effective," she added.

One-third of the world infected

At present, the news site reported, the CDC does not screen or test the 70,000-plus refugees brought into the U.S. every year for latent TB infection. Rather, they are tested for active TB infection only, then allowed to enter after the agency determines that treatment was successful.

Even refugees treated for active Multi Drug Resistant (MDR) tuberculosis, as seen in this video of Burmese refugees being treated at a refugee camp in Thailand, are permitted entry into the U.S., despite recent studies showing that between 4 and 5 percent of those deemed successfully treated have a recurrence of TB within two years.

The problem is real. Recently the Minnesota Department of Health reported that 22 percent of refugees resettled there have tested positive for latent TB.

It should be noted that, according to the World Health Organization, one-third of the global population – more than 2 billion people – are infected with some form of TB.

Sources:

Breitbart.com

AAPSOnline.org

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov