What doctors and law enforcement face at the southern border
Neha Jaggi Sood, a spokesperson at the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the CDC, told me that though the CDC has ”comprehensive systems to track communicable diseases,” they do not “track diseases by immigration status.”
Sood added that “underreporting might occur.”
Dr. James Hodges, an internist practicing at the Texas border, told me that in his experience, the “open border” is leading to more drug-resistant tuberculosis in the United States because patients are only partly treated by over-the-counter antibiotics available in Mexico.
In southern Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb told me, “Border Patrol and local agencies have seen all types of diseases like tuberculosis, scabies, COVID, hepatitis A and B, gonorrhea, syphilis, mumps, chicken pox, dengue fever, etc. When the discussion was hot and heavy about Title 42 (a law that allows denial of entry to limit the spread of a disease) going away, I would consistently say it wasn’t just about COVID; it was about all the other health hazards being brought across our borders.”
Dr. Marc Siegel, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and a Fox News medical correspondent, is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health.
Dr. Paul Offit, head of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me in a radio interview recently that it is measles that keeps him up at night. With measles vaccination rates dropping, and not all undocumented migrants are screened for measles before entry, he might well be right.
Measles and other vaccines are offered to ELIGIBLE U.S.-bound migrants and refugees, but there's no enforcement in place yet.
The health risk extends wherever the migrants are sent, including here in New York City. The porous border is not just a national security crisis, it is also a public health emergency.
Dr. Marc Siegel, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at New York University's Langone Health.
