Article

2008-03-21 Britain

Man diagnosed with first ever British case of 'untreatable' tuberculosis strain

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Posted by anonymous5089 2008-03-21 11:03|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 All but one of the 53 patients died in an average of 25 days after samples were taken for drug resistance tests.

At least a half dozen of those were nurses and healthcare workers.

This is a scary disease.

Posted by Phil_B 2008-03-21 11:09|| 2008-03-21 11:09|| Front Page Top

#2 God Bless the Health Care workers.

My deepest sympathies to their families, from first hand experience they are angels, their professionalism and dedication concerning their patients goes way beyond any "regular" job.

* after months of "procedures" and shuttling back and forth between Intensive care and my private room I secretly gave up. Nothing was holding me to this World but for one sweet sweet 90 pound room keeper.

With the sweetest voice and ever so softly [barely audible] She would sing to me old Filipino nursery songs while she went about her work.. they were my last tie to this world...

Posted by Clyde Ulavitch7421 2008-03-21 12:43|| 2008-03-21 12:43|| Front Page Top

#3 "TB Has been eradicated in Britian"

That's the scariest quote in the article, no experience fighting the disease.

Posted by Redneck Jim">Redneck Jim 2008-03-21 12:51|| 2008-03-21 12:51|| Front Page Top

#4 "The strain is not any more infectious than normal TB."

"Over one-third of the world's population has been exposed to the TB bacterium, and new infections occur at a rate of one per second.

Not everyone infected develops the full-blown disease; asymptomatic, latent TB infection is most common. However, one in ten latent infections will progress to active TB disease, which, if left untreated, kills more than half of its victims."

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-03-21 18:35|| 2008-03-21 18:35|| Front Page Top

#5 I would like to add that there is a building almost in line of sight, that used to be a TB sanitarium, before the disease was radically reduced in the US.

A noteworthy feature is its smokestack, used to burn mattresses and linens used by its patients.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-03-21 18:41|| 2008-03-21 18:41|| Front Page Top

#6 Back in the mid-1960's, 4 children (from one family) in the local elementary school were found to have TB. In our small town, the possibility that it could have spread through the school kids/teachers to everyone in town caused the local health authorities to order a tine test for everyone in town. Mama called me at school and told me to get one because I had been home visiting not long before it was discovered. Mama - who was a nurse at the regional hospital - had one and got a red streak the entire length of her arm. She didn't have it, thank goodness, but had obviously been exposed, but good.

It was determined (I don't know how) that she wasn't an asymptomatic carrier and she was moved from men's medical to men's surgical. She wasn't allowed to work on a medical wing again because there was too much risk she might be exposed again and come down with it.

And this was the old-fashioned regular TB.

Anytime I transported a coughing patient to the hospital, I put a mask on me and any other crew members, and on the patient if possible. I've had the TB vaccination. The resistant strains of TB are found mostly in inner cities and among some immigrants, IIUC, but it could be out here in the county. Why take chances?

That is some scary shit.

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2008-03-21 19:58|| http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/]">[http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/] 2008-03-21 19:58|| Front Page Top

#7 My mother had TB, was in a sanitorium for a while when I was small.

I did tine tests annually for many years thereafter. Bad stuff indeed.

Posted by lotp 2008-03-21 20:12|| 2008-03-21 20:12|| Front Page Top

#8 Additional:

"Cases of active tuberculosis in King County (WA) last year jumped 11 percent to a 30-year high, reflecting the area's global connections to a world where a third of the population is infected with the disease, public-health experts said Thursday.

In 2007, 76 percent of the 161 cases of active TB in King County were among people not born in the U.S., and a majority were men, according to statistics from Public Health Seattle & King County.

The most common countries of origin were Vietnam, Somalia, Ethiopia, India and the Marshall Islands...

...In 2007, 20 cases of TB in King County, 12 percent of the total number, resisted treatment by at least one medication. The worst kind of TB, feared by health officials, resists more than one type of antibiotic. Only two cases in Washington last year, both reported in King County, involved such multidrug-resistant TB."

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-03-21 22:42|| 2008-03-21 22:42|| Front Page Top

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