WaPo | John Armstrong, Florida’s top health official , sent a letter last month to the heads of the Department
of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency — taking the extra step of copying the media — requesting that
they tell him how many of the children who recently crossed the U.S.
border from Mexico are in Florida and what illnesses they have. In
asserting that this information was “urgently needed and is vital to
guarding the health and safety of Florida communities, ”
Armstrong fanned anxieties that the influx of children from Central and
South America poses a large-scale threat to public health.
Likewise, Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey, a chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, penned a letter
last month to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom
Frieden requesting a national threat assessment, claiming he had heard
reports of children crossing the border “carrying deadly diseases such
as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus, and tuberculosis.” The
congressman later added smallpox to his list of diseases of concern.
Let’s everybody calm down. No one has ever been infected with Ebola in the Western Hemisphere, dengue fever isn’t transmitted from human to human, only one confirmed case of flu has been found so far among the children and smallpox has been eradicated worldwide.
That leaves tuberculosis,
an infectious disease that actually is of great public health concern.
TB is an airborne illness, caused by a bacterium that can infect any
part of the body, though it typically affects the lungs. Symptoms include severe weight loss, lethargy and bloody coughing. It can be fatal without treatment.
