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February 17, 2005
TB or Not TB is the Question Britain Must Ask to Avoid Becoming the World-Capital of Health Tourism
“They don’t know it, but we’re bringing them the plague”, reputedly quipped Sigmund Freud to the two fellow psycho-analysts who accompanied him on his first trip to the USA as their boat approached New York harbour in August 1909.
They had gone there after the head of a Massachusetts university had invited Freud to lecture on his revolutionary new form of psychotherapy about whose supposedly miraculous efficacy rumours had started to circulate in the US.
Ignorance of their own very much other than metaphoric highly contagious disease is not an excuse that can be pleaded by the many TB carriers from overseas who have seemingly been entering Britain of late to gain the benefits of free NHS treatment for their condition. Their numbers would undoubtedly have helped to make Britain the world’s capital for health tourism and significantly have contributed to the startling rise of reported cases there of this disease in recent times.
Nor can ignorance be the plea of either the Government or Opposition of the risks to which they seem willing to continue to expose the country by failing to advocate that all would-be entrants to it from countries in which TB is prevalent be made to undergo prior screening and found clear of the disease before being allowed to enter.
Neither political party seems willing to demand that all seeking entry from these countries should undergo prior screening before being able to travel to it. At present, both seem content to demand the screening of those coming from them who seek permission to enter for periods of six months or longer.
Both political parties at present thus seem willing to allow in without screening those with or who suspect themselves of having the disease, if they simply declare they intend to stay for only a short visit. Once through immigration control, they can then make straight for the A & E department of the nearest NHS hospital which is obliged to admit and offer unlimited free treatment to all carriers of this disease.
The current failure of the British authorities to demand prior screening of all would-be entrants coming from high risk countries may help to explain why, as Sue Reid reports in a chilling story published in yesterday’s Daily Mail, Britain today is host to staggeringly much higher proportions of TB sufferers who have entered it from high risk countries than is the USA which insists that all would-be entrants to it from high risk countries undergo prior screening, no matter for how short a declared stay.
It does not take the special talents of a psycho-analyst to speculate why neither party is willing to call for the appropriate policies to stem health tourism in general and the rise of this deadly disease in particular. It seems they are afraid of losing the potential votes of those who hail from high risk areas whose kin might find it harder to enter, if such policies were adopted.
But all in Britain are equally vulnerable to the spread of diseases like TB. Political parties should start to think about what votes they would attract if they were first to promise to clamp down once and for all on the problem of health tourism.
Anyone tempted to think the above scare-mongering is recommended to read this letter in The Times for Saturday 19 February.
Posted by David Conway at February 17, 2005 11:54 AM
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