Extreme Tuberculosis

[Story]

Pardon if this is a re-post, but nothing showed up on any searches.

Here's the backstory:

We can't handle lethal TB strain, medics warn

By DAGI KIMANI

KENYAN MEDICAL EXPERTS HAVE warned that the region is woefully unprepared to deal with Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB), which has killed more than 100 people in South Africa.

XDR-TB, which kills more than 95 per cent of its victims even under the most advanced medical care, is far more scary than multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which was first detected in Kenya in the late 1990s.

While MDR-TB is resistant to isoniasid and rifampicin the two most powerful firstline anti-TB drugs available XDR-TB is additionally resistant to at least three of the six classes of secondline medicines, making it virtually untreatable. Secondline medicines are used to treat patients who are not responding to firstline drugs like isoniasid and rifampicin.

http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafric...mag1203072.htm

Now, read about this moron in the US:

Published: 03.02.2007
Man with 'extreme' TB may be jailed until death
The Arizona Republic
A man infected with an especially virulent strain of tuberculosis has spent eight months in a hospital jail ward under a court order and may be held until he dies.
Robert Daniels has not been charged with a crime, but the 27-year-old violated the rules of a voluntary quarantine, exposing others to a potentially deadly illness. Maricopa County public health officials got a court order to keep him locked up.
The TB strain Daniels has is so dangerous that he has never met his appointed lawyer, Robert Blecher, who describes the situation as "extremely unusual."
Daniels' hospital room is designed so that air flows in, never out, to prevent the bacterium from spreading.
Daniels, who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Russia, contracted "extreme multidrug resistant tuberculosis" while living in Russia, court records show.
He was diagnosed two years ago in Russia, and said he came to Phoenix in January 2006 after being told drugs were hard to get and expensive.
Daniels went to a Phoenix hospital with respiratory problems in July 2006, and was sent to a Phoenix halfway house for indigent TB patients under a voluntary quarantine. He was ordered to continue treatment and wear a mask when he went out in public because the disease is spread by airborne contact.
Daniels stopped taking his medication and went unmasked to a restaurant, a convenience market and other stores, court records stated.
Robert England, Maricopa County's tuberculosis control officer, said in court filings that Daniels understands the rules, but "merely refuses to follow them."
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/43554.php

Like that? Then you'll LOVE this!

Students too cool for surgical masks?

ANN ARBOR, Mich., March 11 (UPI) -- A project at the University of Michigan has students wearing surgical masks to monitor possible flu outbreaks, but some students have been slacking off.

The Chicago Tribune reported on the project, in which more than 800 students have volunteered to wear the surgical masks at all times except while eating and sleeping. The study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of numerous studies worldwide to evaluate the effectiveness of such measures in controlling a potentially deadly flu pandemic.

But, the Tribune reported, while some students have been rigorous about keeping the masks on, many others have slacked off due to embarrassment or discomfort. Students have reported feeling silly wearing the mask, and others have talked about the masks being uncomfortable.

"It's hard to breathe with them on," said Kelly Patrick, 18, a project participant.

Experts have not altogether expressed surprise at some of the students not wearing the masks. Tomas Aragon, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Preparedness at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, suggested that people may not be willing to take such measures until a dire threat is present.

and finally

http://www.dailyhome.com/news/2007/d...-7c09v0435.htm
Tuberculosis case found at Munford Middle School

By David Mackey
03-10-2007

MUNFORD — A Munford Middle School student has been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and school officials are requiring hundreds of students to get tested for the rare disease.

Cindy Elsberry, superintendent of Talladega County Schools, said officials from the Alabama Department of Public Health will administer a skin test, with parental permission, to all students Tuesday at Munford Middle and Munford High, which share a media center, cafeteria and restrooms. Students who ride bus No. 00-29, which includes some Munford Elementary students, will also be tested, as well as faculty and staff.

Health officials will check the results of each student’s skin test Friday and send the results home to parents. A follow-up test will also be given in May. Elsberry said ADPH personnel have assured the School System that it is safe to continue school as normal.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that generally attacks the lungs, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control Web site. While the disease was common and often deadly decades ago and still is in undeveloped nations, its occurrence has been greatly reduced in the United States, with about 14,000 cases diagnosed in 2005.

[Diomed]

Hurrah for the white plague!

TB is going to be with us for a long, long time. And thanks to idiots like Robert Daniels, it's going to be doing a lot more killing in the so-called first world than it has in a century or so.

[MTS]

I think TB is more lethal in Africa because so many already have AIDS.

In the US it's making a comeback through unregulated immigration. The underclass of all races also refuse to take their meds and are generally stupid.

My mom used to talk about working at a rural health clinic in Louisiana years ago, in the 40's I think. They kept records and if someone didn't come in for treatment, a man with a gun came and got you.

I personally know several people who have been exposed at work, and one who actually contracted the disease.

I won't go into the propaganda about how lovely and harmless the gay lifestyle is, but TB is a running buddy of HIV.

[olsarg]

TB is becoming a probllum around meat packing plants in Iowa. Seems the workers don't need a pysical to handle your food they are all healthy americans. Thanks gov. V for saying we need more immigrants they work cheaper and help raise the crime rate.

[Story]

From Madison WI 'Capital Times' -

Thomas Schlenker: Tuberculosis a global threat that we here must fight, too
By Dr. Thomas Schlenker

Although the threat of a devastating influenza pandemic is real, the greater global infectious disease threat today, for most of the last 500 years and for the foreseeable future, is tuberculosis.

The basic facts about TB are astonishing.

Tuberculosis kills 2 million people every year.

One third of the world's population is infected. New, mutant strains, resistant to our most powerful antibiotics, called multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), ravage Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe and regularly find their way even to Wisconsin. This past year, Public Health Madison-Dane County identified and treated nine individuals with TB, two of whom had MDR-TB.

The cost of effectively treating those infected with MDR-TB is hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient. This huge investment of time, effort and resources by the health care system, public health and, sometimes, the police and judicial system, is nevertheless money well spent. It's money well spent in that the alternative to treatment is death for the patient and possible widespread transmission of a potentially lethal disease to the community.

Contagious influenza, even the pandemic varieties, is short-lived and survivable by most healthy people with no treatment at all. But untreated MDR-TB is almost always fatal and can be transmitted over an extended period of time.

Like pandemic influenza, effective TB response requires that local and state public health agencies work closely and creatively together with clinical physicians, hospital systems, the police, courts and social services. Unlike pandemic flu, which visits us unpredictably every 10 to 30 years and thus allows for only simulated preparation, TB is a constant presence that requires real-time responses that carry real-time consequences whereby we learn by doing.

Issues like mass screening, isolation and quarantine, public notification, nontraditional treatment regimens and in-home support are confronted every day.

To my mind, the ongoing practice of high-quality TB control is the best way to prepare for the expected influenza pandemic.

As the director of the local public health agency, I appreciate the flow of federal bioterrorism dollars that have allowed us to improve our emergency response infrastructure since 9/11. On the other hand, the recent news story - "More than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the government cannot show how the $5 billion given to public health departments has better prepared the country for bioterrorism attack or flu pandemic" - does reflect that at least some of those billions might have been better spent.

March 24 is World Tuberculosis Day - an appropriate time to propose that investment in TB control and other core public health functions is perhaps the best way to be truly prepared.

Dr. Thomas Schlenker is the director of Public Health Madison-Dane County.
Published: March 16, 2007