The Health News – 7 April 2014

Overview

• Queensland Police have wrapped up the Gold Coast’s biggest drug operation in history, arresting more than 150 people on 400 charges.

• The High Court has rejected the application of A Brisbane-born baby and his asylum-seeking family and plans to move the family from detention in Brisbane are underway.

• A growing number of Americans are opposing vaccines and raising concerns about a resurgence in contagious diseases like measles and whooping cough.

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Queensland Police have wrapped up the Gold Coast’s biggest drug operation in history, arresting more than 150 people on 400 charges

Operation Kilo Fraction – a 19-month Gold Coast drug investigation – was finalised over the weekend with a series of night-time drug raids..

According to Police ,they have charged 152 with 400 drug-related offences.  17 people face drug trafficking charges.

Prominent players in the Surfers Paradise nightclub industry – Nightclub associate Ivan Tesic and alleged Bandidos sergeant-at-arms Joshua Downey are two of the high profile men arrested.

Information about cocaine trafficking in the region prompted police to initiate the operation. Authorities have seized large amounts of cash and drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, methylamphetamine and meth oil, with an estimated street value of $26 million.

According to police, the drugs trafficked were sourced from Sydney and that the blitz is the biggest ever carried out on the Gold Coast.

High court rejection: Asylum seeker family and sick baby to be moved to Darwin Updated Sun 6 Apr 2014, 10:42am AEST

The High Court has rejected the application of A Brisbane-born baby and his asylum-seeking family and plans to move the family from detention in Brisbane are underway.

Baby Ferouz was born with respiratory problems in November and court proceedings are underway to determine whether he will be granted Australian citizenship. Lawyers argued that his family should be kept in Brisbane to be close to doctors and legal support and that the baby is entitled to Australian citizenship.

According to attorneys for Baby Ferouz, “For the Government to forcibly transfer him and his family now after everything they’ve been through is beneath contempt,” and that “Not only was Ferouz born in Brisbane, he and his family are now settled here in the local detention centre”.

Further, “Their doctors are based in Brisbane, they have legal proceedings in Brisbane this month and yet they are to be moved thousands of kilometres away. The court was told the family needed to leave the Brisbane detention centre to make room for two other asylum seeker families who need medical treatment.

According to officials, Baby Ferouz also has a sister with severe intellectual disabilities. The Immigration Department plans to move the family to a Darwin detention centre.

Vaccine Denial Goes Mainstream in the United States by Kathy Jones

A growing number of Americans are opposing vaccines and raising concerns about a resurgence in contagious diseases like measles and whooping cough.  Vaccine hesitancy is increasingly common, and not only when it comes to infant and childhood immunizations, experts  say.

Two in three working age adults refuse to get the annual flu vaccine and the same proportion of parents decline the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for young adolescents, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Doctors are surprised at how many decline the three-dose shot to prevent HPV, a sexually transmitted infection which can lead to cervical cancer in women and cancers of the head, neck, penis and anus in men. The vaccine is recommended for school age boys and girls before they become sexually active, and can be given as early as age nine.

The CDC said in February that two-thirds of adults aged 18 to 65 had not had their seasonal flu shot, and that hospitalizations in this age group had doubled over last year.

Deaths from flu complications were also far higher than usual  In recent years, reports linking vaccines to autism have been debunked, but fears of adverse events — which experts say are rare — have proven difficult to erase.

Some parents are troubled by the increasing number of vaccines children are given, which have risen from seven in 1985 to 14 today, a result of medical advances, according to the CDC.