Healthy children only wanted for adoption to USA

A recent article in Reuters news implies that the USA is really only interested in bringing children from foreign countries that have a full clean bill of health. With regard to children who may be suffering from Tuberculosis some 880 children from 33 different countries were screened for TB at the Minnesota International Adoption clinic over a period of 5 years ending in 2001. Overall results showed that 12 percent tested positive for TB.

The article claims that children younger than 2 years spend the most time indoors with caregivers who may have active TB disease, which is likely why they were at greater risk of becoming infected than older children, the researchers suggest. This I find highly unlikely as caregivers employed by most countries are required to undergo a medical examination each year.
The article further states that evidence was found for chronic malnutrition in 28 percent of the children and acute malnutrition in 5 percent.

The overall conclusion of this article can only be that the USA is really only interested in importing healthy children for adoption, which goes against the cry of the international adoption agencies, who claim they offer the poorest of child a chance by inter country adoption.

The agency concerned fails to mention that TB is fully curable today in 99% of cases, so the fact a child who is for adoption may have TB is no real problem.

What we see here is US inter country adoption agencies becoming far more selective in the children they wish to have adopted by American citizens and this no doubt is reflected in the fact that the agency will gain a far higher price for a child with a clean bill of health, rather than a child with a slight health problem.

Of course it is vital that all children in all countries that allow inter country adoptions are tested for HIV as all children need to be registered HIV free, but for curable infections and diseases there should be no discrimination on health grounds..

Clearly here again the inter country adoption US agencies are putting profit before children’s rights. Considering there were some 533,000 Children in foster care in 2002 one wonders why inter country adoptions are contemplated by US citizens above those of their own counties children.