The rate of TB is 43 percent among migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in San Diego County, which is more than ten times greater than the latent TB rate of 4 percent found in the general population.
“Applicants needed to have work authorization and will go through the same review and background check as other potential employees, according to the company,” NBC 7 reported, but Starbucks is not testing for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) as part of the “review and background check” of its potential employees.
NBC 7 reported that “[d]ozens of people from Syria, Somalia and other countries throughout the middle east and Africa came out to interview [with the 30 local Starbucks managers] at the International Rescue Committee office on Main Street [in El Cajon]” last week.
In a 2013 study from a research team led by Dr. Timothy Rodwell, “an associate professor and physician in the Division of Global Health at UCSD [University of California at San Diego]” data was examined from “LTBI [latent tuberculosis infection] screening results of 4 280 migrants resettled in San Diego County between January 2010 and October 2012”.
The researchers found that “[t]he prevalence of LTBI was highest among refugees from sub-Saharan Africa (43 percent) and was associated with current smoking and having a clinical comorbidity that increases the risk for active tuberculosis. Although refugees from sub-Saharan Africa had the highest prevalence of infection, they were significantly less likely to initiate treatment than refugees from the Middle East.”
The 2013 Rodwell study revealed that, among migrants in San Diego, the incidence of active TB is 327 per 100,000, more than 100 times greater than the 2.9 per 100,000 incidence rate of active TB among the general population in the United States.
“El Cajon is located in San Diego County, where more than 20 000 refugees have been resettled by the federal government in the past nine and a half years since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2008,” according to Breitbart tadalafiltablets.net News, but no change in latent TB testing and treatment requirements has been registered in San Diego County since the 2013 study.
While California, like most states, requires TB testing for health care workers, the food and beverage industry is not required by California law to be tested for TB prior to hiring since it has never posed much of a risk in the past. TB-infected Starbucks baristas now pose a huge potential health risk to other Starbucks employees and its unsuspecting customers.
The large number of migrants is the result of a resettlement programme by the International Rescue Committee, one of nine voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) paid more than $1 billion annually by the federal government to bring migrants into the United States, and the largest VOLAG in San Diego County.
The Department of State’s figures on its interactive website show: 177 migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 134 from Somalia, 20 from Eritrea, 14 from Ethiopia, 11 from Sudan, 5 from the Central African Republic, 2 from Kenya, and one from Cameroon of the 1 263 migrants who have been resettled in San Diego County in the last ten months.
“Around 10 percent of those with LTBI will develop active TB at some point in their lives. The triggering mechanism to activate latent TB is not entirely understood, but high levels of stress, crowded living situations, poor public health practices, the presence of other diseases that lower the immune system, and behavioral conduct–such as smoking–appear to increase the chances of activation,” Breitbart pointed out.
Many migrants have not been tested by the federal government for TB in their initial domestic medical screenings either as they are not mandatory. “Most of the refugees we talked to here in El Cajon say they just got to the country in the last month,” NBC 7 reported.
Breitbart News repeatedly asked Starbucks for comment on its TB testing procedures, but received no response.