Tuberculosis Cases by
Origin - Canada: 1980 and 1996
HEALTH CANADA
Laboratory Centre for
Disease Control
.
Tuberculosis Cases by
Age Group and Origin - Canada: 1996
HEALTH CANADA
Laboratory Centre for
Disease Control
"Tuberculosis, not the Y2K
may be the real millennium bug, and Canada is an open target because of
lax immigration screening," warned Paul Fromm, Director of the Canada
First Immigration Reform Committee, said today. Canadian immigration authorities
are failing spectacularly in protecting Canadians from the scourge of tuberculosis,
Fromm charged.
An especially virulent and drug resistant form of tuberculosis is exploding
in poverty stricken Russia. Paul Fromm, Director of the Canada First Immigration
Reform Committee, said today.
According to comments by Dr. Hans Kluge, director of Medecins Sans
Frontieres' tuberculosis programmes in Russia, 10 per cent -- that is,
100,000 to 110,000 people -- of Russia's prison population in infected
with TB and, of those, at least one third carry the multi-drug resistant
superbug. According to the South China Morning Post (March 24, 1999): "When
multi-drug-resistant TB appeared in New York in the early 1990s, it cost
authorities US$250,000 to effectively treat each patient. Between 1991
and 1993 the American health services spent US$1 billion on controlling
it."
Health Canada reports a shocking increase in the percentage of foreigners
bringing the disease into Canada. In 1996, 63 per cent of the 1,849 TB
cases reported were in the foreign born, up from just 35 per cent in 1980.
(Health Canada, Health Protection Branch, Laboratory Centre for Disease
Control, Tuberculosis in Canada)
In November 1997, Toronto was reporting 140 - 170 cases of tuberculosis
a year. Now there are 450 to 500 new cases recorded in Toronto (a three-fold
increase in less than a year and a half).
The major source of new TB cases in Canada are immigrants and Canada's
medical establishment has been sounding the alarm for several years, Fromm
explains. "The City of Toronto has 450-500 cases of TB per year with
an incidence rate three times the provincial and Canadian average. ...
In 1996 the foreign-born accounted for 92% of Toronto's TB cases."
(TB in Toronto - Information for Physicians - Ontario Medical Association
- March 11, 1999)
According to the World Health Organization Annual Report (1997), in
1990 "up to 600 people per 100,000 in China had some form of tuberculosis;
... in India today, every second adult is infected with the tuberculosis
bacterium." Distressingly, India and China rank high among the top
ten sources of immigration to Canada. In 1996, according to Facts and Figures,
1996: Immigration Overview, published by Citizenship and Immigration Canada,
India and Mainland China were our second and third largest source of immigrants.
Hong Kong placed first, said Fromm.
"Canada must screen newcomers before they enter the general population,"
said Fromm. "Those with active tuberculosis must be excluded. This
is especially important with the more than 25,000 persons who show up at
our airports and claim 'refugee' status. Almost all are immediately released
into the general population and it takes months before their claims are
assessed," said Fromm.
"Among these unscreened people, we may well have far worse than
Typhoid Mary!" he warned.
Transport Canada should also consider demanding proof of a recent TB
test from travellers from tuberculosis hotspots, like Russia, China, India,
and Southeast Asia boarding Canadian carriers. "We fussily deny people
the right to smoke on planes, although the harm caused by secondary smoke
is largely unproven,": Fromm said. "However, we take no precautions
to screen out those infected with tuberculosis. Yet, we have a number of
recent examples of several people contracting TB after just a few hours
of exposure on a plane to someone carrying this blight."
tuberculosis,
Fromm charged.
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