In many states, the concerned localities and the local government are considered responsible for the medical care and expense of indigent people. Among the documented needy population sprouts an increasing number of alien persons who exist among the medically underserved community. Studies attempting to determine the exact health needs of a certain population discovered that a hefty amount on medical costs is consumed by an illegal immigrant population.
As national political debates emphasize the need to exercise exclusivity positions in the illegal immigrant issue, tighter restrictions are imposed on illegal immigrant’s access to health care and other basic services. Federal and local spending enact measures to control and reduce welfare spending “by cutting out medical care and services to undocumented residents”. Many however believe that refusing basic health services to illegal persons in dire need threatens the safety net among American families in underserved areas as they lay exposed to the potential spread of communicable diseases due to refusal of treatment.
Refusing preventive and diagnostic care to infants and children is eventually a costly affair to American society because communicable diseases is unlike any choosy society; disease knows no borders and respects no race as preventable childhood diseases are laid out freely in the open air we breathe. This paper, without political motivation and interest maintains the need to provide basic health care services to infants and children across the population.
In summative detail through a descriptive and retrospective study, this article will confront the possible incidence of communicable disease due to an absent preventive health care provision for the alien children. The possible outcomes will likewise be discussed in an effort to point out increasing health costs in the event of a disease emergency occurrence. Finally, this paper desires to point out the need to hold in abeyance the implementation of refusing preventive health care to infants and children in order to uphold the nation’s medical health.
Statement of the Issue Denying preventive health care services to infants and children poses a detrimental health issue to the nation. Public health for years has been generally focused on the preventive health needs of children because of their increasing susceptibility to avoidable diseases. The recent restrictions though, imposed on the provision of health services to illegal immigrants extend to infants and children.
Based on ample readings covered by quantified scientific data, the innocent bystander to political and geographic bickering should not be subjected to medical deprivation as a medical responsibility to national health. It is a known fact that children may harbor infectious diseases; children of illegal immigrants are highly susceptible to diseases prevalent in their own countries. Without routine preventive and diagnostic care such as access to immunization, infants and children of illegal immigrants become innocent hosts and carriers of diseases in their indigent host communities.
In a study of infectious diseases among immigrants by Huerga and Turrientes (2003), “immigrants from less developed countries contribute to the emergence of diseases” based on an identified number. Although the setting for the study was on the EU with 988 respondents, 15. 5% were children ranging from 0-13 years old and were children of undocumented immigrants. The Minnesota Department of Health released its survey among refugees “entering the state in 1999 which accounts for 55% of the children entering the state to be between the ages of 18 and 2”.
Both studies however support the fact that immigrant children can be innocent carriers and hosts of communicable diseases. The relevance of this knowledge is highly appreciated as it provides us with a substantial understanding of eliminating health care restrictions to the marginalized sector. Preventing children from easy access to diagnostic and preventive health care services predisposes them to the likelihood of spreading disease into the entire society. Altogether, a widespread epidemic can prove economically fatal to an ailing economy, quite detrimental to this society.