Texas officials hope to contain the spread of tuberculosis (TB) and avoid a serious health threat by conducting a second round of mass testing at a Houston-area high school where, in recent weeks, the number of people that tested positive for the infection jumped from four to six and now, 10.
The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services has not responded to a Breitbart News request for the number of Benson Magnet High School students who arrived in the country as refugees and completed an initial domestic medical screening, tested positive for latent TB infection (LTBI), and successfully completed medical treatment for that condition.
Seven of 172 students, faculty, and staff at Benson Magnet High School in Omaha, Nebraska, who were given blood tests during the past two weeks have tested positive for latent tuberculosis (TB) infection.
Extraordinarily high levels of latent TB infection among Sub-Saharan refugees who have arrived in Minnesota during the past decade appear to be the ticking time bomb that has exploded into 296 cases of active TB diagnosed in the state among refugees in the past five years.
At least five foreign-born cases of multi-drug resistant TB were diagnosed in Philadelphia over the past three years, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health Tuberculosis Control Program.
Dr. Jane Orient tells Breitbart News: “It is grossly irresponsible for a public health official to be cavalier about the introduction of even one case [of active TB] in her jurisdiction.”
The introduction of MDR TB to the United States represents a serious public health threat, since its successful treatment is uncertain and very expensive. Active TB can usually be treated successfully in six to nine months at a cost of $17,000 per patient, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), but MDR TB treatment costs over $150,000 per patient and can take between 20 and 26 months.
This makes Idaho the seventh state to confirm to Breitbart News that recently arrived refugees have been diagnosed with active TB.
Louisiana now has the dubious distinction as the state with the highest reported number of recently resettled refugees with active TB —at least among the five states that have confirmed to Breitbart that refugees resettled in their state have either arrived with active TB, or developed it within the first year of their arrival.
“These statistics underscore the urgency [of the public health risk posed by the refugee resettlement program in Tennessee],” Norris tells Breitbart News.
Two-thirds of contagious tuberculosis carriers in the United States during 2015 were born overseas, up from one-fifth in 1986.
The scientific findings come from the research team headed by Dr. Timothy Rodwell, “an associate professor and physician in the Division of Global Health at UCSD” and one of the top tuberculosis experts in the world. They belie political arguments made by immigration advocates that reporting on the public health risks posed by high rates of latent TB infection (LTBI) among refugees is a “baseless exercise in fear mongering” and “incite[s] a vast overreaction.”
Thirty-five percent of the 901 refugees resettled in Vermont by the federal government between 2013 and 2016 tested positive for latent TB infection, according to data provided to Vermont Watchdog by the Vermont Department of Health.
“Most [of the] 222 cases of active tuberculosis infection (TB) …reported among Arizona’s refugee populations…[in] the past two decades …were caused by latent tuberculosis infections that became active after years or even decades of lying dormant,” according to the Arizona’s Department of Health.
Four refugees sent to Indiana by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in 2015 were diagnosed with active tuberculosis once they arrived in the Hoosier State, according to the Indiana Department of Health.