Home » IBD Editorials » IBD Editorials As Obama Leads Anti-Ebola Charge To Save Africa, Little Done About New Diseases Coming Up From Border 16 Comments Posted 09/18/2014 06:45 PM ET Email Print Reprints Comment inShare A political cartoon by Rayma Suprani in El Universal Wednesday depicts the collapse of Venezuela’s socialist health care system with a... A political cartoon by Rayma Suprani in El Universal Wednesday depicts the collapse of Venezuela’s socialist health care system with a... View Enlarged Image Politics: Amid applause, President Obama has made fighting Ebola in Africa a military priority, to protect U.S. health. So why is he doing nothing about the raft of new diseases that may be rolling in from our unguarded border? We cant dawdle on this one, the president intoned this week, announcing that he would be putting 3,000 boots on the ground in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, in a $600 million rescue effort for three nations badly hit by the dreaded Ebola epidemic. We have to move with force and make sure that we are catching this as best we can, given that it has already broken out in ways that we have not seen before. And to make sure the whole effort seemed more about protecting the U.S. than the charity effort in a distant corner of the globe it is, he turned up the verbal panic knobs: Its spiraling out of control. If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us. It might be believable if he showed the same concern and priority for the strange new diseases now spreading and infecting Americans here, which at least one prominent U.S. doctor says may be spread by illegal aliens now in our country with zero health care screening as part of Obamas open borders policy. Dr. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told radio host Laura Ingraham Thursday that the Obama administration has been real tight lipped about a new respiratory illness known as enterovirus D68 that has affected 153 children in 19 states in the U.S., the latest four in San Diego and Ventura counties in California. We dont know where its coming from ... are there immigrants from Central America, where this disease has allegedly been prevalent before? Should we be (studying) the virus to see whether its like whats been found in some of these countries that are just sending waves of children across our border and they havent been quarantined long enough to make sure theyre not sick? she asked, according to a Breitbart TV report. As a matter of fact there have been a terrifying rash of new diseases in the region. In Venezuela, a man-made health crisis is engulfing the country as doctor flight (including even its Cuban doctors) and an absence of medicine, bandages, sanitation supplies and all the other signature shortages of socialism have left its once excellent health care system in a state of collapse. Venezuela has confirmed 398 cases of chikungunya fever, 55,970 cases of malaria and 45,745 cases of dengue fever — all diseases that were either unknown or else had had been eradicated from the country two decades ago. Theres also 9 deaths from a strange new, unnamed hemorrhagic fever in Aragua state. Meanwhile, in Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica, a monster dengue epidemic is raging through the region right now, with 120,000 cases, and 60 deaths, and public health emergencies declared in those countries. Funds earmarked for the Red Cross to combat it amount to a meager $169,000, according to a report in the British Guardian. Yet El Salvador and Honduras remain major shippers of illegals to the U.S. To assume dengue is the only problem coming out of those countries, with many viruses known to travel along the same vectors as dengue, and with a heavy rainy season along with hurricanes is naivete. The reality is, an unguarded border, a welcome-mat approach to illegals, well developed smuggling networks, and zero medical screening are virtually a guarantee of the spread of new diseases — and demand the political will to investigate it. But the presidents focus is on Africa right now, and on the frightening disease that has caught the medias attention and which may get his poll numbers up. Yet the millions of malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS cases far more rampant in those African countries are getting no attention. Nor are the illnesses that could easily come up here from the south. It points to crass politics — a wag-the-dog bid to divert public attention from the presidents other political problems, and a pander for the Latino vote. This is no way to deal with epidemics Read More At Investors Business Daily: news.investors/ibd-editorials/091814-718068-obama-fights-ebola-in-africa-but-nothing-done-about-diseases-from-south-of-the-border.htm#ixzz3DnFPDuw9 Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 19:56:12 +0000
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