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.
This makes Idaho the seventh state to confirm to Breitbart News that recently arrived refugees have been diagnosed with active TB.
Dr. John Baird, Health Officer for the Fargo Cass Public Health Department in North Dakota, confirms to Breitbart News that the agency, which serves all of Cass County, has diagnosed and treated four refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) between 2012 and 2015.
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.
The refugee health data provided to Breitbart News by TOR about tuberculosis makes Tennessee the state with the second highest rate of LTBI among recently resettled refugees in the nine states that have either publicly reported the information, or provided it upon request to Breitbart News.
The recent increase in the number of active TB cases reported in the United States is driven by increases in the foreign born population with high rates of active and latent TB, as Breitbart News reported last week.
Eleven refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) were among more than 111,000 refugees who arrived in Florida during the three years between 2013 and 2015, according to a report the Florida Department of Health recently sent to Breitbart News.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee—Both the Tennessee Department of Health and the VOLAG (voluntary agency) that administers the refugee resettlement program in the Volunteer State, Catholic Charities of Tennessee’s Tennessee Office for Refugees, are failing to make public critical information on refugee tuberculosis (TB) health care.
State Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville) is sharply rebuking Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam for mischaracterizing the Tennessee General Assembly’s Tenth Amendment lawsuit against the federal government for its operation of the refugee resettlement program to the state’s Attorney General, Herbert Slatery.
“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.