Posted on 04/10/2007 11:52:55 AM PDT by AuntB
Washington County health officials say a dozen employees at a Beaverton call center who were exposed to tuberculosis are on medication to prevent them from developing the disease.
The county’s Department of Health and Human Services reported that in late March one employee of the Stream Inc. call center on Southwest Murray Boulevard was diagnosed with TB. In the past two weeks, the agency has tested nearly 70 employees who were exposed to the illness.
A dozen workers tested positive and are taking medication to head off a TB infection.
Health officials said the employees were mostly likely exposed at the call center, which makes the case somewhat unusual, because most TB cases in the county are isolated, with only a few people exposed, said Kent Burtner, public information officer for the Department of Health and Human Services in Hillsboro.
“We have typically between eight and 20 new TB cases every year, so this is not that surprising,” Burtner said. “What makes this different is that it was exposed at the place of employment.”
Tuberculosis usually strikes the lungs and causes fatigue, weight loss, fever and night sweats. Symptoms of TB include coughing, chest pain and coughing up blood.
The disease is spread through the air, but requires prolonged contact. People can’t catch TB from walking near a person who is infected with the disease, Burtner said. Just being exposed to the illness doesn’t guarantee that a person will develop the disease, he said.
“It’s very hard to catch TB,” Burtner said.
Stream Inc. of Richardson, Texas, has about 1,000 employees in its Beaverton call center. This is the first time TB has been found in one of its 27 worldwide branches, said Katherine Dockerill, the company’s senior vice president for marketing and business strategies.
“This is very unusual,” Dockerill said. “It would be unusual for any business in Beaverton. It just happened that the individual who had the disease came to work for us.”
The person infected with TB has not worked at Stream’s call center since early March. County officials wouldn’t provide details about the person, other than to say he or she was receiving treatment and was expected to recover.
“TB is now a curable disease,” Burtner said. “It didn’t use to be.”
When the disease was discovered, county health officials met with Stream employees and found a high percentage of positive tests (17 percent) which indicated the illness had been spread at the call center.
Of the 12 employees with a positive TB test, 11 had close contact with the employee who was ill.
Despite that exposure, health officials don’t think the disease will spread to other Stream workers. The county is monitoring the office and its employees to make sure there are no future risks of illness, Burtner said.
not only has stream passed out flyers that have in-accurate info about TB, but they are trying to downplay the health risk. we were never informed about were and when test would be made available, and it is being treated with little or no concern by management. we have just been told not to worry about it, that theres nothing to worry about. But after doing some research, i am a little apprehensive about putting my concerns by the wayside. I found out that the anti-biotics that are used to treat TB, can take up to a year to completely kill the infection, And it has some pretty serious side effects and can even kill you, or give you serious liver problems. "anon employee"
I don’t play a doctor on TV, but my first act would be to test every employee for HIV and then isolate the sick. TB and HIV are ever increasingly going hand-in-hand.
...let alone the MDRTB that illegals are bringing with ‘em.
MDRTB?
Is that the strain of TB that they can’t treat?
except of course for the new strain of TB that the illegals have brought with thtem that is resistant to anti-bitotics and is virtually incurable. I guess they didn't think they should mention that one.
Well duh - most cases probably don't involve a sicky who coughs on the mike that sits right by his mouth then snots up his mouse and buttons. (Someone else uses this same stuff next shift, then someone else.) The next day the same sicky goes to another work station and it starts all over.
I worked at a Verizon call center, and it was awful. There LOTS of filthy looking pierced/tatooed lowlifes who didn't even wash their hands after using the bathroom.
I caught the nastiest hacking cough I've ever had in my life at that place. It took all winter to go away. I got another job pronto!
Nothing to see hear....just move along....
MultiDrugResistant TB. PARTICULARLY found in Russian prisons......and Latin American families that live in high #persons/household ratio.
Think they’re now calling it XDR TB.....Extensively Drug-Resistant TB.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/tb/pubs/tbfactsheets/xdrtb.htm
“It’s very hard to catch TB,” Burtner said
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This is not true, it depends on the strain. You can walk into a room 8 hours later and contract TB. Some believe it can be contracted up to 24 hours.
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TB leaves permanent scarring on your lungs and once contracted you must have x-rays annually to see if their is progression. Shame on this person for deliberately lying to the public.
This article is full of lies and I agree with your analysis. I am somewhat positive giving the lack of info in this article it is probably being spread by one of millions guest workers here.
Actually, I had heard a radio news item on this, they went into more detail about immigrants, etc. This article was the only written one I could find.
Illegal immigrants as sources of disease and crime get very little coverage in the MSM.
Anybody remember the E-Coli disaster for the spinach industry a few months back ? The story was that wild pigs got into a field. No mention of whether all the illegals working in those fields had been screened for their health or trained in rudimentary sanitation.
“Well duh - most cases probably don’t involve a sicky who coughs on the mike that sits right by his mouth then snots up his mouse and buttons. (Someone else uses this same stuff next shift, then someone else.) The next day the same sicky goes to another work station and it starts all over.”
You can’t get TB from a surface. The bacillus doesn’t survive on a surface. It has to be hanging in the air in what are called “droplet nuclei”—microscopic pieces of dust to which the TB germs cling. You can develop a latent TB infection if you breathe these in.
If you have concerns, I would simply contact your local health department and follow their instructions. They’ll probably give you peace of mind, too.
Also, there’s a difference between TB ‘infection,’ and tuberculosis, a.k.a. TB disease, a.k.a. active TB.
TB infection, called “latent TB infection” or LTBI, has no symptoms and you can’t pass it onto other people. People with LTBI have a 10% lifetime risk of developing TB disease (for those with HIV the risk of developing TB disease increases to 10% per year), which has symptoms and can be passed on to other people. It can be fatal if not properly treated, but this is rare in the US.
Treatment for LTBI usually requires just one antibiotic taken for 6-9 months. It’s a pain of a regimen, but the side effects are typically negligible.
But again...if you haven’t already done so, you should contact your local health department. Your primary care provider probably won’t be very knowledgeable about it, unfortunately. What doctors usually know about TB has to be conjured from the memory of a single lecture in medical school. An oversimplification, but not by much.
“MultiDrugResistant TB. PARTICULARLY found in Russian prisons......and Latin American families that live in high #persons/household ratio.
Think they’re now calling it XDR TB.....Extensively Drug-Resistant TB.”
MDR-TB and XDR-TB are two different things. I guess I should clarify that to say XDR-TB can be seen as a subcategory of MDR-TB, but the two acronyms aren’t exactly interchangeable.
First, TB drugs are grouped into two main categories: first-line drugs and second-line drugs. Second-line drugs are used to treat strains that are resistant to first-line drugs. They’re not as effective, a hell of a lot more expensive, and have signifantly worse side effects.
Garden variety TB is treated with a standard regimen of 4 first-line drugs: an initial phase of isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide and ethambutol for 2 months, followed by a continuation phase of usually 4-6 additional months of just isoniazid and rifampin. This regimen is standard because it has a high cure rate and if followed properly makes the risk of developing drug resistance almost totally unlikely.
MDR-TB is resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampin, the two most powerful drugs. You can be resistant to all the second-line drugs, or even ethambutol and pyrazinamide, but if you’re not resistant to isoniazid and rifampin, you technically don’t have MDR-TB.
XDR-TB was classified by CDC in March 2005 and was then defined as resistance to isoniazid and rifampin, plus 3 or more classes of second-line drugs.
The definition has since been revised to mean resistance to isoniazid and rifampin plus any drug from the class known as fluoroquinolones plus any injectable second-line drug.
There’s not complete consensus as to the definition, but the second one is seen as the more authoritative one.
Since being classified in 2005, XDR-TB has been confirmed in 35 countries. The first reported cluster of patients was in a rural hospital in the town of Tugela Ferry, KwaZulu-Natal region, South Africa. 53 patients were confirmed to have it, of whom 52 died—half of them within 16 days of being diagnosed. 44 of them had been tested for HIV and all were positive. It’s important to note, though, that HIV is not a necessary condition for having TB, MDR-TB or XDR-TB. It just makes the risk of developing TB after infection much more likely (10% lifetime risk versus 10% annual risk). TB and HIV do constitute a co-epidemic in places where both are common. It’s because a full third of the world’s population has a latent TB infection (LTBI: a dormant infection, no symptoms, can’t be transmitted), with concentrations obviously in developing countries. LTBI is like kindling, and HIV, which of course destroys the immune system and allows LTBI to develop into TB disease, is the match.
““It’s very hard to catch TB,” Burtner said
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This is not true, it depends on the strain. You can walk into a room 8 hours later and contract TB. Some believe it can be contracted up to 24 hours.”
“Very hard is relative,” but TB is not like the flu or ebola where you have a significant risk of getting it through casual exposure to someone. You typically have to have close, prolonged exposure to someone who’s actively coughing. In other words, your chances of getting it on the bus, for example, are all but nil. When there’s a case like this where the person infects colleagues, there tends to be a lot of fright, and going by the article he did a pretty decent job of reasonably allaying people’s fears. He’s really talking to the people who may have worked in a completely different part of the building and who are now worried they’ll have the disease.
The chances of getting TB by hanging out in a space 8 hours after someone who was infectious are so low as to be impossible, practically speaking. I’d be willing to bet there’s not a single published paper showing transmission 24 hours after the fact. And if there is a paper out there, it’s in conditions specifically manufactured so as to maximize the risk of this happening—purposefully artificial conditions, in other words.
I did not know that. Those call centers are still a terrible place to work though!
Hahaha...no doubt!
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