One disease causing grave concern is tuberculosis, a disease once thought under control in Germany. Infected immigrants entering the country undetected are bringing new strains of the illness that are highly contagious.
Orthopedic surgeon Carsten Boos warns that hundreds of thousands of migrants with TB and other diseases have slipped through the cracks and can’t be tracked. He believes as much as 40% of all tuberculosis pathogens are multidrug-resistant, which poses an inherent danger to the German public.
When asylum seekers come from countries with a high risk for tuberculosis infections, the RKI, as the highest German body for infection protection, should not downplay the danger. Is a federal institute using political correctness to conceal the unpleasant reality?
The media reports that in 2015, the federal police registered about 1.1 million refugees. Around 700,000 to 800,000 applications for asylum were submitted and 300,000 refugees have disappeared. Have they been checked? Do they come from the high-risk countries? One has the impression that in the RKI the left hand does not know what the right one is doing.”
The list of diseases being found in Germany, as reported by the RKI, is absolutely stunning:
The report shows increased incidences in Germany of adenoviral conjunctivitis, botulism, chicken pox, cholera, cryptosporidiosis, dengue fever, echinococcosis, enterohemorrhagic E. coli, giardiasis, haemophilus influenza, Hantavirus, hepatitis, hemorrhagic fever, HIV/AIDS, leprosy, louse-borne relapsing fever, malaria, measles, meningococcal disease, meningoencephalitis, mumps, paratyphoid, rubella, shigellosis, syphilis, toxoplasmosis, trichinellosis, tuberculosis, tularemia, typhus and whooping cough.”
Specific increases in certain diseases are worrisome for public health authorities: hepatitis B has increased 300%; measles has jumped 450%; tuberculosis has risen 30%; migrants account for 40% of new HIV/AIDS cases.
Some doctors, however, believe that the actual number of cases of tuberculosis is far higher and have accused the RKI of downplaying the threat in an effort to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.”
While the increase in disease generally hasn’t resulted in mass outbreaks, in the past year the number of measles cases has more than doubled.
Around 700 people in Germany have been diagnosed with measles during the first six months of 2017, compared with 323 cases in all of 2016, according to the Robert Koch Institute. The measles outbreak has spread to all of Germany’s 16 federal states except one, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a state with a very low migrant population. The epicenter of the measles crisis is in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state and also the state with the highest number of migrants. Nearly 500 people have been diagnosed with measles in NRW during the first six months of 2017.”
Michael Melter, the chief physician at the University Hospital Regensburg, noted that many of the migrants showing up at his hospital have diseases that haven’t been seen in decades.
Some of the ailments I have not seen for 20 or 25 years,” he said, “and many of my younger colleagues have actually never seen them.”
No doubt Chancellor Angela Merkel will find a way to spin the medical crisis as a wonderful training opportunity for German medicine. She already has help in that regard.
Christoph Lange, a tuberculosis expert at the Research Center Borstel, said that German doctors were unfamiliar with many of the diseases imported by migrants: “It would be useful if tropical diseases and other diseases that are rare in our lives played a bigger role in the training of physicians.”
The German Parliament approved a controversial new law this year on June 1 that requires kindergartens to inform health authorities if parents fail to provide evidence they’ve consulted a doctor about vaccinating their children. Those who refuse to comply can be fined €2,500 ($2,850).
We cannot be indifferent to the fact that people are still dying of measles,” said German Health Minister Hermann Gröhe. “That’s why we are tightening up regulations on vaccination.”
Public opinion is split on the new law between those who believe vaccinations should be mandatory, and others who think parents should make the final decision on whether to vaccinate or not. The latter cite privacy protections provided by the German constitution.
As the migrant flow continues, expect public health to further deteriorate in Germany.
Source: The Gatestone Institute
