Hundreds of babies at risk from TB-infected immigrant doctor

Below is an example of what happens when you fail to adequately train enough of your own doctors and become dependent on importing Third Worlders to staff the hospitals.

From Yahoo!7 News:

A doctor at Adelaide's Women's and Children's Hospital has tested positive to tuberculosis (TB), putting hundreds of babies at risk.

SA Health has identified 300 babies who may have come into contact with the doctor.

They have been given antibiotics as a precaution, even though the risk of infection is extremely low.

Other children and hospital staff are being offered testing.

The department says doctors are contacting the families of those children.

Chief medical officer Professor Paddy Phillips says there was no sign of TB when the doctor arrived in Australia in March.

"He has not slipped past screening. He passed screening. He was well and healthy," Professor Phillips said.

Immigration Department official Sandi Logan says the doctor had a medical examination and chest x-ray in India by an approved doctor before coming to Australia and the results were clear.

"The doctor was free from any signs of TB," he said.

The doctor is now on sick leave.

Nine-week delay

SA Opposition health spokeswoman Vickie Chapman is outraged that babies have been put at risk.

"We have a situation where a doctor has been working at the hospital for some nine weeks before he has undertaken his test for tuberculosis," she said.

"But understand this - the children in the neonate ward are the children who are less than a week old.

"They are vulnerable, often prematurely born, and they are very sick children and it is quite unconscionable for the Government to say 'Well we'll just give them a dose of antibiotics'."

Source

This is hardly the first time an immigrant with TB has been allowed to enter Australia:

MIGRANTS with serious illnesses - including lepers and more than 100,000 people with tuberculosis - have been allowed into Australia.

An audit of the Immigration Department has found that it knowingly allows migrants to enter Australia with serious contagious diseases but frequently fails to check up on whether they have sought medical attention.

The Australian National Audit Office revealed yesterday that since 2000-01 more than 100,000 immigrants with tuberculosis had entered Australia on the condition that they submit to medical supervision.

The damning report said that, despite imposing the conditions, the department was unable to follow up and check whether the medical advice had been sought.

*snip*

The audit said the current health screening procedures had "limitations and gaps", which weakened the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's ability to protect Australians from public health threats.

The system relied largely on the honesty of visa applicants to disclose whether or not they had a disease that could be a public health risk, the audit said.

Full article