McCAUGHEY: Tuberculosis, a silent killer crossing the US border

Article content

Open borders allow deadly narcotics and criminal gangs to invade America. But there is also a silent killer that is finding its way across the border: tuberculosis.

Article content

U.S. public health authorities are more concerned about equity — redistributing health care resources among racial groups — than about preventing a disease that the U.S. once nearly eradicated from becoming a threat again.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported cases of tuberculosis increased 34% from 2020 to 2023; they continue to rise. More than three-quarters of cases involve foreign-born people who contracted the disease in their home country or traveled through countries with high TB ​​rates. The incidence of tuberculosis is 60 times higher in Haiti than in the US

In New York City – the No. 1 destination for migrants – the incidence of tuberculosis is 2.5 times the national average and rising.

As many as 89% of TB patients in the Big Apple were born abroad. The Flushing/Clearview neighborhoods in Queens, Sunset Park, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan are the neighborhoods hardest hit. According to the city’s most recent annual tuberculosis summary, the largest national group of reported tuberculosis cases comes from China.

Article content

Article content

TB is no laughing matter. Globally, it has just overtaken COVID-19 as the biggest killer of infectious diseases on the planet. There is no effective vaccine for it, but most cases – except for severely resistant cases – can be treated with antibiotics, provided they are taken daily without interruption for several months or more. Not easy.

Western Europe, Scandinavia and North America are all reporting rising tuberculosis rates as migrants arrive from poorer countries where tuberculosis is common. British health authorities are warning the public about the characteristic cough associated with tuberculosis.

In Europe, public health authorities are engaged in a lively debate about how to affordably screen TB carriers and prevent them from infecting local populations. A person may carry latent tuberculosis for years and then suddenly, after settling in a new country, develop active and highly contagious tuberculosis and spread it through coughing and sneezing.

Article content

In the US, however, the CDC is emphasizing healthcare equity and rushing resources to “disproportionately affected” groups. That’s fine, but what about protecting Americans from the resurgence of a disease they’ve largely eliminated? In all of the agency’s reports, there is no mention of the cause of the increase in tuberculosis: an open border.

Immigrants who enter the country legally and apply for a green card are screened for tuberculosis with the interferon-gamma release test. Latent carriers are allowed into the country and referred to a local health department for follow-up treatment. It is voluntary and variable, but better than no screening at all.

Migrants who cross or enter illegally using President Joe Biden’s new parole app will not be screened. Zipper.

Article content

The CDC is MIA about screening and isolating those infected before bringing the disease to cities and towns across the country. The agency forgets its mission “Control and Prevention”.

Take the case of a Chinese migrant with active drug-resistant tuberculosis who crossed the border illegally in April. When her symptoms worsened and she was diagnosed as ‘very positive’ on July 23, nothing was done to isolate her. Instead, she was shuttled between immigration processing facilities in California and Louisiana, exposing hundreds of people.

Now Louisiana is suing federal authorities to detain the exposed migrants until they are medically cleared. State Attorney General Liz Murrill is warning about illegals who “have not been tested for diseases that could threaten the lives of Louisiana and American citizens.”

Article content

Thousands of unaccompanied minors with latent tuberculosis are being released into communities across the country, rather than being held in health and human services holding facilities for the many months it takes to treat them with a course of antibiotics.

CDC data shows a whopping 42% increase in the incidence of tuberculosis among children ages 5 to 14 in one year.

On November 1, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) demanded that Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorka take precautions against a disease invasion, warning that tuberculosis is “spreading rapidly through the millions of unscreened illegal immigrants being released into the interior of the United States. ”

The number of reported cases this year – just under 10,000 – is small, but the trend is worrying. The US waged a war on tuberculosis in the 20th century and won. Americans should not have to surrender to this disease now because of open borders.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York

Article content