WE HAVE BECOME A GLOBAL COMMUNITY !! - Page 3

Cakers3 · ‎06-17-2015

@Kachina624 wrote:
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Tinkrbl. We had all but eradicated TB in this country until we started taking in refugees from Southeast Asia. When we allowed Haitian refugees in we had our first AIDS cases. Ebola is still out there.

Why should we care what happens in Africa? Because of the diseases that arise from the filthy conditions under which people live. West Nile Virus is a case in point. It killed my mother, so it became personal.

I very well remember the Southeast Asian refugees in the 1970's - my area took in hundreds.

But they were NOT the cause of the resurgence of TB; TB controls in THIS country had been sorely neglected and money for such programs were diverted elsewhere. TB hospitals were closed and screening became almost non-existent in some areas.

While it is true that other strains of TB showed up on our shores, had we kept in place the research for new meds and ways of detecting new strains the resurgence of TB during that time would have been minimal. It's not like TB was eradicated world wide; our health care system (CDC) and WHO were well aware of the continuing issue with TB. We dropped the ball big time in the USA on that one.

To put the blame on those refugees is closing the barn door after the horse has run off.

"" Compassion is a verb."-Thich Nhat Hanh

151949 · ‎03-09-2010

We had antibiotics that were very effective against TB and that is what got it under control in this country and most of the world HOWEVER - as in many other bacteria - there has developed a resistant strain of TB and that is the issue. Now the antibiotics that worked for years no longer do.And that is certainly not a problem that was brought here from third world countries - it is a modern , western society issue from overuse of antibiotics.