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A Voice for Private Physicians Since 1943

Deadly Diseases Crossing Border with Illegal Immigrants

By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD – http://HerPlace.com

A flood of illegals has massively surged at our southwestern borders. The economic impact of medical care, education and incarceration for illegals forced on taxpayers is bankrupting Arizona.

Why are such swarms entering the U.S. illegally NOW, particularly children? Newspapers in Mexico and Central and South America are actually describing U.S. “open borders,” encouraging people to come with promises of food stamps or “amnesty.” It is textbook Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm and collapse the economic and social systems, in order to replace them with a “new socialist order” under federal control.

Carried by this tsunami of illegals are the invisible “travelers” our politicians don’t like to mention: diseases the U.S. had controlled or virtually eradicated: tuberculosis (TB), Chagas disease, dengue fever, hepatitis, malaria, measles, plus more. I have been working on medical projects in Central and South America since 2009, so I am aware of problems these countries face from such diseases.

A public health crisis, the likes of which I have not seen in my lifetime, is looming. Hardest hit by exposures to these difficult-to-treat diseases will be elderly, children, immunosuppressed cancer-patients, patients with chronic lung disease or congestive heart failure. Drug-resistant tuberculosis is the most serious risk, but even diseases like measles can cause severe complications and death in older or immunocompromised patients.

TB is highly contagious – you catch it anywhere around infected people: schools, malls, buses, etc. The drug-resistant TB now coming across our borders requires a complex, extremely expensive treatment regimen that has serious side effects and a low cure rate.

Chagas, or “kissing bug” disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, is carried by the triatomine bug that transmits disease to humans. Although “kissing bugs” are already here, they are not as widespread as in Latin America. Right now, Chagas disease is uncommon in the U.S., so many doctors do not think to check for it.

Chagas causes debilitating fatigue, headaches, body aches, nausea/vomiting, liver and spleen enlargement, swollen glands, loss of appetite. When Chagas reaches the chronic phase, medications will not cure it. It can kill by arrhythmias, congestive heart failure or sudden cardiac arrest.

Vaccine-preventable diseases like chicken pox, measles and whooping cough spread like wildfire among unvaccinated children. Other illnesses, along with scabies and head lice, also thrive as children are transported by bus and herded into crowded shelters – courtesy of the federal government. Treatment costs are borne by taxpayers.

Our public health departments complain of being overtaxed by a dozen cases of measles or whooping cough. How will they cope with thousands of patients with many different, and uncommon, diseases? Americans, especially Medicaid patients, will see major delays for treatment.

Delays to see doctors at the Phoenix VA hospital cost the lives of 58 veterans while waiting for care. This is just a portent of far more deaths to come from delays for Americans’ medical care as thousands of sick illegals swamp already overcrowded emergency rooms. How will these facilities stay open at all under the financial burden of this huge unfunded federal mandate to provide “free” treatment?

People express concern about child endangerment from illegal minors dumped on Arizona streets in hundred-plus degree heat, with no support. A bigger concern is American endangerment from life-threatening diseases added to social and economic collapse from costs of treating hundreds of thousands of illegals.


Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. is a 2014 Ellis Island Medal of Honor recipient, and the 2007 recipient of the Voice of Women award from the Arizona Foundation for Women for her pioneering advocacy for the overlooked hormone connections in women’s health.

Dr. Vliet is a preventive and climacteric medicine specialist with medical practices in Tucson AZ and Dallas TX that take an integrated approach to evaluation and treatment of women and men with complex medical and hormonal problems. Dr. Vliet is also CEO of International Health Strategies, SpA, a global medical consulting company based in Santiago, Chile whose mission is medical freedom and privacy while preserving the Oath of Hippocrates focus on individual patients.

Dr. Vliet is a past Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She received her M.D. degree and internship in Internal Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and completed specialty training at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She earned her B.S. and Master’s degrees from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

Dr. Vliet has appeared on FOX NEWS, Cavuto, Stuart Varney Show, Fox and Friends, Sean Hannity and many nationally syndicated radio shows across the country as well as numerous Healthcare Town Halls addressing the economic and medical impact of the 2010 healthcare law. Dr. Vliet is a co-host of America’s Fabric radio show.

Dr. Vliet’s health books include : It’s My Ovaries, Stupid; Screaming To Be Heard: Hormonal Connections Women Suspect– And Doctors STILL Ignore; Women, Weight and Hormones; The Savvy Woman’s Guide to PCOS.

Dr. Vliet’s medical and educational websites are www.HerPlace.com, and www.InternationalHealthStrategiesLtd.com.

DISCLAIMER: Dr. Vliet speaks as an independent physician, not as an official spokesperson for any organization or political party. Dr. Vliet has no financial ties to any health care system or health insurance plan. Her allegiance and advocacy is to and for patients.

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