TB case prompts testing at A&M-K[South Texas]

Texas A&M University-Kingsville administrators are urging campus-wide tuberculosis testing after a male student was diagnosed with an active strain of the disease late last week.

Dr. William Burgin, the local health authority for the Corpus Christi-Nueces County Public Health District, said a private physician notified the district about the case last week. Burgin said the patient remains hospitalized in good condition.

The university is not releasing additional details about the infected person because of medical privacy laws, but university spokeswoman Jill Scoggins estimated at least 300 people came in close contact with the person.

Widespread testing is being urged because he could have been in contact with anybody on the campus, Scoggins said.

Because tuberculosis is a relatively rare disease these days, it's often one of the last things doctors consider when making a diagnosis, Burgin said.

In this case, the patient received six weeks of treatment for pneumonia before doctors determined he had tuberculosis. Burgin said that the student likely was very contagious while in school.

Tuberculosis germs are put into the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. The germs can float in the air for several hours, depending on the environment. People who breathe the air containing the germs can become infected, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The university found out about the infected student Thursday afternoon at 4:30 from the health district. Members of the university's Life Services and Wellness Department discussed the steps to be taken with the health district and state health department personnel and made arrangements to bring additional medical personnel to the campus for testing.

They re-convened Friday morning to begin identifying individuals on campus who would have had close contact with the man, to begin developing the campus-wide alert, Scoggins said.

Health district personnel arrived on the campus at 2:30 p.m. Friday. They set up testing in the clinic, accompanied university personnel for personal meetings with some of the groups who had close contact with the individual and began reviewing a proposed campus-wide e-mail statement.

The health district and state officials approved the e-mail at about 4:45 p.m. Friday and it was distributed, Scoggins said.

The first people began arriving at the clinic for testing and by 6 p.m. Friday, about 100 people had been tested, she said.

Free testing will continue through Friday at the Life Services and Wellness Health Care Clinic, located on the A&M-Kingsville campus on Retama Street between Corral Avenue and Avenue B.

The test is mostly painless with a small needle used to introduce the testing material, called tuberculin, under the skin. If tuberculosis is present there is a skin reaction within two to three days, according to the CDC.

Health district officials still are unsure how the Kingsville student got infected. There is no connection between the student and the only other case in the area this year, which involved a female in the area prison system, Burgin said.

Active tuberculosis germs usually attack the lungs. They can also attack other parts of the body including the kidneys, brain and spine.

Tuberculosis is spread through the air when an infected person coughs, speaks, laughs or sneezes.

Tuberculosis can live in your body without making you sick, which is called a latent tuberculosis infection. It is not contagious at that point. If the germs multiply and become active, a person has the actual disease.

The test is mostly painless with a small needle used to introduce the testing material, called tuberculin, under the skin. If tuberculosis is present, there is a skin reaction within two to three days, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Where: Life Services and Wellness Health Care Clinic, located on the Texas A&M-Kingsville campus on Retama Street between Corral Avenue and Avenue B.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Texas A&M University-Kingsville

In the US, the over whelming majority of TB is a result of an open boarder and untested/undocumented people from Central and South America who come in. Years past TB was nearly a non-issue but as the stream of illegals increased this disease reemerged. In fact, you can even graphically see on a map where this disease manifests itself in the US and it’s surprising to see that this corresponds to where the illegal populations are growing fastest (Over lay the two maps). In Texas we have over 400 cases per year and most boarder states are hit pretty well. Since the illegal bypasses all checks they’re not screened and that’s something not mentioned by the Obama’s and Hillary’s which are stumbling over themselves pandering to the Hispanic voter. In fact Multi Drug Resistant TB has been now popping up in the US as well, formerly only seen in Mexico: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5511a3.htm

How well do you know this issue? A lot of your post is factually inaccurate (it sounds like you got your information from Madeline Cosman without checking it against the readily available data).

1. “In the US, the over whelming majority of TB is a result of an open boarder and untested/undocumented people from Central and South America who come in.”

False - In 2006, the latest year for which data are available, “Hispanic or Latino” made up 30% of all TB cases in the US. In fact, 2001 was the first year that “foreign born” cases (which includes both legal and illegal immigrants) made up the majority of all TB cases in the US. Why did foreign born cases become the majority of total cases? It wasn’t because they were skyrocketing. It was because the numbers of US-born cases were decreasing, while the numbers of foreign-born cases remained stable over the previous 15 years. So while remaining stable in number, the % of foreign born cases increased until they became the majority.

All foreign-born cases (both legal and illegal immigrants) equaled 57% of total cases in 2006. The top 5 countries of origin for foreign-born cases are Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam, India and China.

Here’s the link to presentation of CDC data from 2006:
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/pubs/slidesets/surv/surv2006/default.htm

2. “Years past TB was nearly a non-issue but as the stream of illegals increased this disease reemerged.”

This line is a myth, though commonly believed. At the turn of the 20th century TB was one of the most common causes of death in the US—as it had been for a hundred years. The US started collecting national TB data in 1953 (streptomycin, the first antibiotic used to treat TB, was first used in 1944). The number of new TB cases every year has been decreasing ever since, with the exception of a period in the late 1980s through early 1990s when TB increased and then started dropping again in 1993. But this temporary increase wasn’t due to illegals, it was a consequence of the elimination of federal funding for TB control over a decade earlier.

2006 saw the lowest number of TB cases in the US ever recorded: 13,779. Here’s the link to the latest TB surveillance report:
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/surv/surv2006/default.htm

3. “In fact Multi Drug Resistant TB has been now popping up in the US as well, formerly only seen in Mexico.”

MDR-TB was never “formerly only seen in Mexico.” (I’m guessing you got this from Cosman—she was wrong.) Drug resistance started to be observed shortly after streptomycin became the first antibiotic used to treat TB in the 1940s. MDR-TB (defined as being resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampin) has been reported in virtually every country in the world. WHO estimates there are almost half a million new cases of MDR-TB worldwide each year. Here’s link to the latest global DR-TB surveillance report:
http://www.who.int/tb/publications/2008/drs_report4_26feb08.pdf

The report says: “It is estimated that 489,139 (95% CLs, 455,093-614,215) cases emerged in 2006, and the global proportion of resistance among all cases is 4.8% (95% CLs, 4.6-6.0). China, India, and the Russian Federation are estimated to carry the highest number of MDR cases.
China and India carry approximately 50% of the global burden and the Russian Federation a further 7%.”

Why not do due diligence and look this stuff up before posting it online?

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