Health threat going unreported

As a child in the 1930s, I became personally aware of how tuberculosis (TB) can impact families, neighbors and community as a whole. When a person is discovered with TB it paralyzes everyone who may have known the person. The uncertainty of who else may have contacted TB created fear that is hard to accurately describe this late in life. The massive efforts by our medical professionals supported by our federal government that by 1980s they were able to announce no citizen had contacted TB.

Some of the medical profession expressed concern about possible reoccurrence of TB within our borders not being controlled. The liberal media accused them of using racist scare tactics as an excuse to close our border.

Los Angeles has the number of TB cases exploding with a significant number of patients clearly not responding well to treatment. The Wall Street Journal weekend edition reported our border agents caught an illegal emigrate from Nepal with one of the most dangerous types of drug-resistant TB known as XDR-TB. The individual had traveled by plane to Brazil, by car, boat, and finally on foot and was taken into custody near McAllen, Texas. This strain is resistant not only to the two most potent TB drugs, but also a handful of second-line drugs. Only six cases were reported in 2011, according to the CDC.

Why hasn't the mainstream media reported this health threat? Could it be it would interfere with theirs and the liberals agenda of open borders? I bet if one of their family members acquired this strain of TB they would be screaming Bloody Mary to close the border completely. Fortunately, ICE screens patients for TB when they arrive at a detention facility. How many have been successful and not caught by ICE agents and have TB?

William R. Hadley

Yuma