By David Carrigg
Staff writer

The city’s medical health officer has slammed federal rules surrounding potential tuberculosis-carrying immigrants.

Dr. John Blatherwick said the Department of Citizenship and Immigration’s TB screening protocols are failing because of bribery at the point of departure and rules banning active TB carriers from coming into Canada. "Bribery is rampant overseas. People wanting to emigrate that know they have TB simply get someone else to show up for the chest X-ray," said Blatherwick, who is launching a campaign to reduce the chronic TB rate in the Downtown Eastside.

The number of recorded cases in the area, which has the highest rate of recent transmissions in the province, is 10 times that of the West Side and similar to rates in developing countries.

Blatherwick said Canada needs to test every new immigrant once in Canada, rather than leave it up to overseas doctors contracted by the Canadian government to do TB tests. "Canada is a have country, so instead of saying we only want healthy people, we should be taking them if they meet other standards and saying we will treat them here," said Blatherwick, warning the government must also be prepared to offer no-questions-asked testing of illegal immigrants.

"They have to make it acceptable for people who are here illegally to get chest X-rays."

Blatherwick was reacting to an admission by Immigration minister Elinor Caplan that the federal government has failed to keep track of TB-affected immigrants. Caplan said immigration officials have contravened federal rules by not alerting federal and provincial health authorities when a new arrival to Canada is diagnosed with TB.

Potential immigrants must first pass a TB test, and those who test positive are refused entry until they get treatment, which can take up to a year. If the TB is dormant, they can emigrate to Canada because they’re not contagious, but they’re supposed to be referred to health authorities for tracking.

According to a Queen’s University study to be released later this month, health officials in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec were not notified of 26,350 landed immigrants that were tagged for medical surveillance.

Caplan has launched a review of the communication breakdown. In December, the immigration department took the blame for allowing into Canada a Caribbean man with TB who infected 35 people in Hamilton, Ont. The man was given a clean bill of health by a Canadian doctor working abroad on a Citizenship and Immigration department contract.

Blatherwick said he was unsure how many untracked TB sufferers are living in Vancouver. "The world has tuberculosis, so if you bring in immigrants, you bring in TB."

He added his anti-TB program in the Downtown Eastside has been hampered by delays surrounding the establishment of a community health centre in the area and the nurses’ strike. "We are hanging on with our fingernails and waiting rather than going out and doing heroic things."

Blatherwick said TB will not affect someone with a strong immune system.