New clinics and organizations are helping refugees and immigrants get good health care. Sometimes the drawback is language, other times it is cultural differences, but these women are often not diagnosed in time to save them. - - Donna Poisl
BY CYNTHIA BILLHARTZ GREGORIAN, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Joumana Kheireddine, an immigrant from Beirut, Lebanon, could feel the lump in her breast. A big, hard lump.
Three times, the 35-year-old mother of four went to a community health center in St. Louis in 2006. And all three times a doctor there barely examined her before pronouncing her too young to have breast cancer, she said.
Months passed. In January 2007, Kheireddine broke her back. That's when she learned she had Stage 4 breast cancer that had metastasized to bones throughout her body.
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2 comments:
Wow, that is really sad and disturbing. Discrimination and racism are known to have negative health consequences to their victims. As a midwifery student, I have seen and heard how discrimination not only affects the pregnant women, but also her unborn child. The stress hormones, and other factors, increase health disparities. This situation is even more ridiculous. A doctor, whose is medically obligated to help those in need, lets his bias' over-rule his clinical judgement and a woman and her family suffer the consequences. I have noticed that quite a few 'immigrant groups' aren't aware about 'self-breast exams' and reproductive health measures. Until now, I hadn't thought about this: we teach high-schoolers about reproductive health and 'sex-ed' (though our standards could be higher) but what about those individuals who have immigrated to the US and do not attend high school? Or they migrate later in life?
This story is about my mother she passed away in 2011 thank you guys reading this is amazing.
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