Posted on 11/03/2007 7:05:23 AM PDT by B4Ranch
All of the employees at the Wayne Farms fresh processing plant in Decatur have received tuberculosis skin tests and 212 of them tested positive.
Health workers read and tabulated a final batch of tests Wednesday, said Scott Jones, interim director of the State Department of Public Health's Tuberculosis Control Division. Of the 598 tests administered Monday, 165 tested positive.
In skin tests administered to 167 fresh processing employees Oct. 11, 47 tested positive. One of the 47 has active tuberculosis disease, which is contagious.
All told, 28 percent of those who received skin tests at the fresh processing plant tested positive.
Jones said all 165 employees with positive TB results in the most recent tests would receive chest X-rays on Thursday. Doctors will evaluate those X-rays early next week to determine if any of them have signs of active TB disease.
"We have two (X-ray) technicians in the Division of TB Control to cover the entire state," Jones said. "For this situation, we've rearranged some clinics. We've made this a priority, so we have both of our technicians (assigned to Decatur and) working as a team to get them done."
Wayne Farms Sales and Marketing Director Stan Hayman said Wednesday the company offered to reimburse the state for the cost of the tuberculosis control efforts.
Jones said Thursday that he has a better idea.
"I appreciate their offer," he said.
"If Wayne Farms is interested in investing something, my recommendation to them would be to invest within their own facility to establish a pre-employment screening routine.
"If their intent is to invest, I wish they'd think about ways they can invest toward the future as opposed to reimbursing for a one-time event."
Latent TB infection is not contagious, but it remains in the body for life in the absence of treatment. About 10 percent of latent TB infections eventually become active TB disease, usually because of a compromised immune system.
Testing began after doctors diagnosed a former Wayne Farms employee with active TB disease. The testing revealed that another employee also had active disease. Health officials believe the second employee has a different strain of TB than the first employee and caught the disease from a different source.
In addition to testing other employees at the fresh processing plant, health officials said they tested all others known to have had contact with the two men. Jones refused to say whether either individual has school-age children.
Jones said the Health Department soon would give skin tests to all employees at two other Wayne Farms plants in Morgan County. The company employs 1,300 in the county.
"(Health Officer) Don Williamson asked us to evaluate the entire work force because of the concerns in the community and we're going to proceed with that," Jones said. "This is a very large undertaking. We've expanded this in response to concerns in the community, as a precaution."
Hayman said Wayne Farms welcomes the expanded testing.
"The community concern about this is an issue, but we also have 1,300 people who don't want to have to worry about their health when they come to work," Hayman said. "They have families who want them to work in a safe environment."
Jones said he was not surprised at the number of Wayne Farms employees who tested positive.
"The majority of the folks that we're dealing with in this situation are foreign born," Jones said. "I would expect about 30 percent of them to test positive."
Both employees with active TB disease are Hispanics born in countries with a high incidence of TB, health officials said.
Coughing, laughing or talking can transmit the airborne tuberculosis bacteria. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 15 minutes of close contact with a person who has active TB disease will cause up to 50 percent of people to become infected.
People who are contagious almost always are obviously ill, said Dr. Scott Harris, an infectious disease specialist who works in the TB clinic at the Morgan County Health Department.
Humans cannot catch TB bacteria from chickens, and the bacteria cannot be transmitted through chicken meat.
There are a couple of complicating factors.
Many of the people born in Mexico have been vaccinated for TB, and will test positive - sometimes very positive. And the patients don’t always know whether they were vaccinated. My policy for employees born in Mexico and some of the other countries that have had vaccination programs was to go ahead and get the xray each year instead of the skin test.
The other problem is that some people just don’t express a reaction to the TB test. Protocol nowadays is that if the patient with a negative test hasn’t had a test in more than a year (?3 years?), they have a second “re-test” 2 weeks after the first. They’re only “negative” if the second test is also negative.
While I'm not 100% certain, I'd fully expect that a TB screening would be part of the process when one immigrates legally.
After spending a tour in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s...I came back to test positive. The Air Force had hired out almost all of this chow hall personnel to a bunch of Pakistani and Philippine guys....so there wasn’t much doubt about where I got the thing. I think a fair number of military folks are getting this, and they are quietly treating it without saying much to the public.
I’m from this area of Bama where this TB testing was conducted. None of the locals are surprised. I’m predicting that Alabama starts mandatory testing of TB for all employees of any company within two years. It’ll be a yearly thing...just wait and see. Bama will be the first state to do this.
In 1983 while at Camp Pendelton I had to guard for the night an illegal immigrant with TB, I kept my distance needless to say.
There must be a way for the States to a class action lawsuit against the Federal Government. This should be settled finally in the SCOTUS.
The SC justices should UPHOLD the laws on the books no matter how liberal some of them are. Of course, some will try to legislate from the bench and would be interesting to see their wiggling and going through hoops to explain how breaking the law is OK!
Your point is well taken but those cases are quite rare and not easily detected; found this brief from S Agrawal, a researcher:
“Tuberculosis of the stomach and duodenum is rare in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. Primary involvement is even rarer. Two cases of primary tuberculosis of the localised to the pyloro-duodenal area are presented. The most common symptoms are non-specific leading to a difficulty in establishing a pre-operative diagnosis. A high degree of suspicion is therefore required for its diagnosis and to differentiate it from more frequent causes of gastric outlet obstruction such as chronic peptic ulcer disease and gastric carcinoma. The treatment of gastric tuberculosis is primarily medical with anti-tuberculous drug therapy. The role of surgery lies in the cases with obstruction following hypertrophic tuberculosis. The surgery done is usually a gastroenterostomy. With the relative rate of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis increasing, tuberculosis of the pyloro-duodenal area should be considered in the differential diagnosis of gastric outlet obstruction.”
Point two:
These digestive cases are showing up mainly due to the increasing population of immuno-suppressed patients presenting.
Wayne Farms should put money into tests prior to employment
You know, making sure prospective employees were here legally would also be a nice idea....
“MAN THAT BOTTLE WENT FAST! IF YOU’ALL WILL HELP ME UP I’LL GET ANOTHER”!
The argument makes sense if the policy is only enforced locally. Enforce it statewide or better yet nationwide and then the wages will go up, the companies stay in business and everybody is happy.
Yes, the price of chicken might have to go up by a nickel also but that is the better choice, IMO.
My response to the columnist: Prove it.
Ruling helps workers claiming Tyson hired illegals to cut wages
How quickly they forget.
Help your self. (Believe me, you don’t want the original research. One life of blunders is enough!)
Still it seems to be that the newspaper is somehow reluctant to say, "Hey, a bunch of illegal immigrant chicken-pluckers are lungers," for fear of being accused of bigotry and stereotyping.
Better babies should die than any one should profile.
Coughing, laughing or talking can transmit the airborne tuberculosis bacteria.
This is something I hadn't thought of before. Foreign-born people with TB are probably employed everywhere. Housecleaners, construction workers, moving companies, busboys, taxi drivers, nannies, baby sitters... I think we need some sort of national TB test for "immigrants".
By the same token, the number of TB cases in the US has been reduced so much for many years that it's been described as 'eliminated' (in all but the rarest of cases, of course).
A perfectly legal immigrant comes down with TB in the mid 60's.
A lived all his life just about in Mississippi upper middle class Mississippi white guy dies in Baptist Hospital, Jackson, MS of TB, an, uh 1979 or 1980, I forget which. We gowned and gloved and "observed respiratory precautions" when we called on him.
Yeah that was a while back. I sure don't know if it's relevant. The POSSIBLE relevance of the first story is that the legal immigrant (from Peru) tested positive sometime after her legal admission to the US. Lots of possible explanations, from "artefact" or sloppiness on the first test, to, well who knows what ....
Believe me, I’m not saying that TB doesn’t ever happen in the US. Massive vaccinations had beaten the rate down to a very low number, especially when compared to many other countries. In this case, though, there is a huge percentage of the workers who are testing positive. That raises my suspicions that illegal immigration is probably behind it.
Global Warming! (LOL!)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.