Thousands of African refugees in Israel not receiving tuberculosis tests, Haaretz.com reports

Sep 5 2008

Thousands of African refugees have been released from the Ketziot detention center in the Negev region of Israel without being tested for tuberculosis or receiving preventive treatment despite a rise in TB cases among detainees, Haaretz.com reports.

According to a custody tribunal, which works with migrants, 12 cases of active TB have been reported among refugees who were once held at Ketziot, and the percentage of all active TB cases in Israel among refugees has doubled from 14% in 2006 to 28% in 2008. According to the tribunal, the rate of active TB among detainees at Ketziot is 13.3 times greater than the rate in 1997. In addition, Israel's Prisons Service and Ministry of Health at the end of July reported that 22 TB cases have been detected this year among refugees detained at Ketziot. Among the 22 people, four had active TB and were transferred to a medical facility (Reznick, Haaretz.com, 9/3). Although Itamar Grotto, head of public health for the health ministry, told the tribunal that the ministry's recommendations include "filling a medical questionnaire" and "conducting a chest X-ray for every inmate," the tribunal has called the ministry's response "wrong and misleading" (Reznick, Haaretz.com, 9/4).

In response to the increase in reported TB cases among refugees, the tribunal declared that several tests and vaccinations, including TB screenings, be administered to all detainees before their release from the facility. The tribunal also criticized the lack of TB screenings by appropriate authorities. "Despite the significant rise in the number of active TB patients among the refugees, the health ministry is responding late to events and is not providing the solutions that show the epidemic has been stopped," the tribunal said. The tribunal added that the "main challenges to ensuring public health in Israel, and particularly in controlling TB, were not medical but political and administrative."

According to the tribunal, the Ministry of the Interior and Israel Defense Forces on March 31 released refugees from Ketziot to make room for new detainees, and those released did not undergo medical tests before moving to population centers in Israel. The tribunal said the ministry's "massive and unmonitored releases" were made without "good judgment with regard to the welfare and health of the public." Daniel Shem-Tov, head of the Health Ministry's TB and AIDS Department, in May testified before the tribunal that the lack of testing constitutes a "danger to public health" (Haaretz.com, 9/3).