Smiles the best cure for " 28 per cent were not fully immunised while 25 per cent had an infectious disease." Islamic / Multicultural Medical Science leading the way again?

Smiles The Best Cure

The Sunday Telegraph
October 13 ,2013
Pg 31 

Refugee screening finds many kids at risk

The revelation comes after a joint Sydney Children’s Hospital volunteer refugee health screening program of two Sydney English language centres found more than 90 per cent of children require medical intervention.

The high incidence of illness has triggered a call from health workers to expand the award-winning screening program more widely across the state.
Of the 169 children who were screened, more than 90 per cent had “one or more health conditions”.

Health workers found 75 per cent had nutritional or vitamin deficiencies, 30 per cent had vision or hearing problems, 28 per cent were not fully immunised while 25 per cent had an infectious disease.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner (pictured) will examine expanding the program across the state, after it received a health innovation award last week.

The program’s clinical lead community pediatrician, Associate Professor Dr Karen Zwi, said families arriving into Australia under its immigration program were only screened for tuberculosis.

Once in the country, refugees are given a Medicare card and encouraged to visit a local GP to be screened and treated for any other ailments.
However, Dr Zwi said not all families take up the advice.

Dr Zwi said the majority of children, most of them aged between 11 and 17, had never been immunised, having come from countries in South East, Africa and the Middle East. Once diagnosed, many of the children responded well to treatment, she said. Dr Zwi said health workers were keen to see the screening program rolled out to other language centres to ensure all children were diagnosed and treated.

“Other than tuberculosis, there is no mandatory routine screening of arrivals,” she said.
“The main point is that everything can be managed and treated if we know about it, but if it is left undiagnosed, it can potentially cause a bigger problem later. You do pick up quite serious things sometimes, but nothing that could not be treated.”

Blood screenings taken over two years of the children at the two language centres found four children to have malaria, nine to be suffering from chronic hepatitis B and 72 to have a vitamin D deficiency.