Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” senior national correspondent Jim Avila reported on a “government memo reviewed exclusively by ABC News” that reveals “the flood of immigrant children streaming across the southern U.S. border is so overwhelming federal agencies admit they cannot medically screen all of them properly.”
Avila reported, “Some children are leaving border patrol processing centers with high fevers, flu-like symptoms and other contagious diseases. the memo says the director of refugee health at HHS has identified a breakdown in the medical screening processes at the border patrol facility in Nogales, AZ. Some children flown from that facility to a navy base in Ventura County, CA, were sick. fevers and coughing. others had chicken pox and coxsackie virus. three of the children so sick, hospitalized in the ICU, two of them suffering from pneumonia.”
Dr. Richard Besser, M.D., ABC News’ Chief Health and Medical Editor said “it’s very concerning that children who had pneumonia, who appeared ill, were allowed on a plane, rivering their health and the other refugee children.”
Avila continued “The lack of screening according to government sources may jeopardize the health of workers and other children at the facilities. In fact, ABC news has confirmed that just a week after the unscreened kids arrived there appeared to be a pneumonia and influenza outbreak spreading through the Ventura facility. In Texas ABC news learned of one confirmed case and two probable cases of the HINI influenza strain, commonly known as swine flu, linked to the unaccompanied children.”
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