Immigrants in New Orleans face health issues

The waves of Hispanic immigrants who poured into New Orleans in the weeks and months after Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters receded to help rebuild the city now are facing a torrent of health- and work-related issues, a panel of local and national experts said Friday.

Those issues include exposure to asbestos, lead and other toxins; lack of health insurance and mental health counseling; cultural and linguistic barriers in the health-care arena; scarce prenatal care for pregnant immigrant women; and housing challenges.

The bottom line, the speakers said, is that Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states were not adequately prepared to serve their pre-Katrina immigrant communities or the influx of immigrant day laborers who arrived after the storm.

“Whether it’s a hurricane or a public health crisis, we need to be prepared,’’ said Janet Murguia, president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza, the largest national Hispanic civil-rights and advocacy organization in the United States.

“A community can only recover if it’s a healthy community for all, documented and undocumented,’’ NCLR board member Andrea Bazan-Manson added during a roundtable discussion — titled “Latino Health Status in the Wake of Katrina — on the campus of Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

from the LA Times