The U.S. is facing a major health threat due to the explosion of disease at detention centers holding thousands of illegal-immigrant children on the southern border, says Dr. Elaina George, who specializes in ear, nose and throat afflictions.
"It’s absolutely a health threat,'' George, a board-certified otolaryngologist, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV Monday.
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"It's like a perfect pressure cooker … a culture medium if you really want to think about it in that manner — a 1700 mile track by foot, by train or however else they're coming up.
"They haven't been fed, they're dehydrated their immune systems have basically taken a major hit and you have to remember that they're young children so they don't have a lot of reserve to begin with.''
And the illnesses are plentiful, ranging from the common cold to tuberculosis.
"Frontline health professionals that say that they're seeing people with active TB who are coughing up blood, who are short of breath, who are physically in the throes of active TB and they are communicable,'' George said.
"Not everybody shows symptoms right away, but they could have the disease before it actually manifests or shows itself. So they're just as infectious.''
Just as serious is the fact that many of these sick youngsters are being jetted around the country to be placed in foster homes.
"They are putting them on commercial airliners. [The] TSA has been ordered to stand down and allow these children and adults to get on planes without ID. So they're arriving in Georgia, they're arriving in Maryland they're arriving all over the country,'' she said.
"In Maryland, there was an immigrant child who had TB and the parents just got a letter from their school stating that their children have been exposed. There's going to be a lot more letters like that going out if parents are lucky.''
TB, once fairly common to treat, is a menace again, George noted.
"That is the most frightening part about TB. In the past they had treatments for it, but now it's become so difficult to treat that even as a healthcare worker provider like myself we have to take tests every year and actually do questionnaires to make sure that we're not able to pass any diseases,'' she said.
"[And] there's mumps, there's chickenpox, which most of us have been vaccinated for, but infants haven't yet and the senior citizens are all at risk or people with HIV or other immune compromising diseases.
"Then you have … all sorts of tropical diseases that I, as a healthcare professional don't have a lot of facility with … People on the front line are really going to have to brush up on tropical diseases so that we know what we're looking at. It's just the tip of the ice berg, I'm afraid.''
Parents must take extra caution, George warned.
"Children are known vectors anyway. Runny noses, they play with each other they touch each other and touch their noses,'' she said.
"Just imagine how easily diseases could be transmitted through a family, for example. My problem with this is that the government has no regard for us as American citizens.
"My dad was an immigrant I am not against legal immigration at all, but the way this is being done, it is being done haphazard and it's all about winning at any cost and it's political strategy without regard for health.''
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