Islamic Superstition is Dangerous to Your Health
If you are laid up in a hospital and want nurses who wash their hands of bacteria and virus between duties, then you may have to enage in religious profiling.
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Susan MacAllen
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/
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It is interesting the ways in which seemingly small movements by Muslim radicals to change, challenge, and render our societies chaotic by using our own laws and values against us, usually turn out to be global efforts. Such is the case with the current battle in our hospitals and clinics over common health care practices designed to keep us all safe. This time Islamic radicalism isn’t threatening only our legal and social structures - this time it’s our very health.
It recently came to the attention of health officials at London Chest Hospital that Muslim health care workers, and visitors to Muslim patients, were refusing to wash their hands with the provided anti-bacterial gel dispensers before coming into contact with a patient. In the world of health care, this is extremely alarming: it is estimated that yearly in the U.S. alone, 1 in 20 hospital patients or some 2 million contract a bacterial infection while in the hospital; 90,000 die.
Required use of anti-bacterial scrubs and frequent hand-washing is in place in all Western hospitals. To put it simply, when any person refuses to abide by this measure, it puts patients at risk of illness and even death. So why did these people refuse to comply? Well, because the antibacterial “rub” contains alcohol - and that is forbidden in Islam. (Evidently infecting already immuno-compromised surgical patients is just fine in Islam.)
National Health Services assistant Theresa Poupa was at London Chest Hospital during a cousin’s stay, and spoke of her amazement at the situation she observed, “I could not believe it. The signs are large enough and clear enough but they just took no notice and walked straight into the ward. I was there almost every day for three weeks and I saw it repeated dozens and dozens of times. When I raised the matter with the nursing staff they just shrugged and said that Muslims were refusing to use the gel because it contained alcohol.”
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It is interesting the ways in which seemingly small movements by Muslim radicals to change, challenge, and render our societies chaotic by using our own laws and values against us, usually turn out to be global efforts. Such is the case with the current battle in our hospitals and clinics over common health care practices designed to keep us all safe. This time Islamic radicalism isn’t threatening only our legal and social structures - this time it’s our very health.
It recently came to the attention of health officials at London Chest Hospital that Muslim health care workers, and visitors to Muslim patients, were refusing to wash their hands with the provided anti-bacterial gel dispensers before coming into contact with a patient. In the world of health care, this is extremely alarming: it is estimated that yearly in the U.S. alone, 1 in 20 hospital patients or some 2 million contract a bacterial infection while in the hospital; 90,000 die.
Required use of anti-bacterial scrubs and frequent hand-washing is in place in all Western hospitals. To put it simply, when any person refuses to abide by this measure, it puts patients at risk of illness and even death. So why did these people refuse to comply? Well, because the antibacterial “rub” contains alcohol - and that is forbidden in Islam. (Evidently infecting already immuno-compromised surgical patients is just fine in Islam.)
National Health Services assistant Theresa Poupa was at London Chest Hospital during a cousin’s stay, and spoke of her amazement at the situation she observed, “I could not believe it. The signs are large enough and clear enough but they just took no notice and walked straight into the ward. I was there almost every day for three weeks and I saw it repeated dozens and dozens of times. When I raised the matter with the nursing staff they just shrugged and said that Muslims were refusing to use the gel because it contained alcohol.”
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posted by jillosophy at 2/07/2007 12:47:00 PM
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