U.S. Immigration Policies May Hurt Fight Against TB
The report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said infected detainees in Immigration and Naturalization Service processing centers were on average receiving 22 days of treatment before deportation.
A minimum of six months is usually required to successfully treat TB. The disease, caused by an airborne bacteria spread by coughing and close personal contact, is cured with antibiotics.
INS detainees are believed to account for at least 1 percent of the estimated 16,000 TB infections reported each year in the United States. Their infection rate is about 12 times the national average.
Infectious disease specialists said they were worried that the tendency to partially treat this high-risk group could lead to a surge in TB cases in Mexico, the source of a large number of illegal aliens in the United States.
The United States could face a similar crisis, they say, because deportees often return. A quarter of known TB carriers deported to Latin America between January, 2000 and March, 2001 came back to the United States, the report said.
"This is affecting our ability to control tuberculosis in our country and across the border," Reuters quoted Dr. Masae Kawamura, head of TB Control in San Francisco and a member of the Advisory Council for the Elimination of Tuberculosis, a panel that advises the Department of Health and Human Services, as saying.
"Each of these cases, if untreated, can infect 10 contacts depending on how contagious the individual is." said Kawamura, who noted that incomplete treatment was one of the factors that had led to the emergence of drug-resistant TB strains. Some states require detainees to be cured before deportation, but these laws are superseded by federal regulations allowing the INS to deport individuals once no longer contagious.