Tuberculosis

Officials at the University of Maryland Baltimore County have a sent a letter to students and faculty confirming that someone on campus has been diagnosed with tuberculosis. The letter did not say if it was a student or faculty member who was infected and if the person contracted the disease on campus or somewhere else. UMBC and Baltimore County health officials, who are also working on the case, declined to give further details about the victim, citing privacy concerns. Tuberculosis is an airborne disease in the lungs.

As op-ed commentator Richard E. Chaisson wrote recently, "despite the devastation that TB wreaks, it still is not a global health priority" ("Tuberculosis, the forgotten killer," March 24). Just as it was necessary to eradicate smallpox and combat polio in order to protect ourselves, we also need to step up global efforts to control tuberculosis. That's because any TB case is one sneeze away from spreading to someone else, and in the jet age that puts us all at risk. Until recently, it took five or six weeks to determine if a TB case was drug resistant.

As op-ed commentator Richard E. Chaisson wrote recently, "despite the devastation that TB wreaks, it still is not a global health priority" ("Tuberculosis, the forgotten killer," March 24). Just as it was necessary to eradicate smallpox and combat polio in order to protect ourselves, we also need to step up global efforts to control tuberculosis. That's because any TB case is one sneeze away from spreading to someone else, and in the jet age that puts us all at risk. Until recently, it took five or six weeks to determine if a TB case was drug resistant.

This is World Tuberculosis Day, the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch discovered the cause of tuberculosis (TB), an airborne infectious disease that continues to rage around the world, killing 1.4 million people each year. The disease remains a leading infectious disease killer globally. In Africa, TB is the biggest killer of people with HIV/AIDS. Baltimore once had the highest rates of TB cases and deaths in the U.S., but a heroic effort by the Baltimore City Health Department's TB clinic, led by the late Dr. David Glasser in the 1970s and 1980s, resulted in drastic reductions in our TB rates through the use of directly observed therapy (DOT)

Q: Is tuberculosis a contagious, or "catchy" thing? Can you get it if you have sexual relations with a person who has tuberculosis? If someone does this, should he or she see a doctor for a TB test?A: Tuberculosis is contagious but it is not one of the diseases transmitted through sexual relations. The explosive problem of sexually transmitted diseases includes AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes simplex, chlamydia, lymphogranuloma venereum, chancroid, granuloma inguinale, condyloma acuminata (genital warts)

Mimi suffers from tuberculosis in the opera La Boheme, but in reality, there is little that's romantic about the disease. It is the second-leading cause of death from infection in the world (though not in the United States), says Dr. Richard E. Chaisson, professor of medicine, epidemiology and international health at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research. Worldwide, the highest number of TB cases and deaths in recorded history will occur this year, according to Hopkins' Department of Medicine Web site.

Over the past seven months, Jheri Stratton has been quarantined in her house for a while, ordered to wear a mask to walk her dog, and monitored twice a week by a city Health Department official who watches to ensure that she swallows a handful of pills. She has had to cancel vacations and explain to friends why she can't go out. Since the former waitress at Hooters in downtown Baltimore was diagnosed with active tuberculosis in November, allegedly after she and others contracted the disease from a manager at the Harborplace restaurant, her life has been miserable, Stratton said.

A commuter student at the University of Maryland, College Park was diagnosed with tuberculosis last week, resulting in letters being sent to hundreds of potentially exposed classmates urging them to get tested for the disease. No other cases of active tuberculosis have been found, said a spokeswoman for the Prince George's County Health Department. The sick student lives in another county; after the diagnosis, that county's Health Department notified Prince George's officials, who notified the university.

ACCORDING TO Ed O'Brien, skipper of the charter fishing boat Semper Fidelis III, the column that appeared in this space last Friday was "so inaccurate ... totally in the extremity ... way out of perspective ... read by a lot of people" and now "killing" men who make their money by taking others out on the Chesapeake to catch rockfish. Captain Ed might sound a little extreme himself, but I guess he needs to go there to counter what he sees as an attack on his livelihood. Media reports that Chesapeake rockfish are infected with a disease called mycobacteriosis were "flat wrong," O'Brien says, and did equal damage to the bay's charter fishing commerce.

The 13 employees of a Manchester landscaping company who have tested positive for tuberculosis were given chest X-rays at Carroll County General Hospital on Friday to determine whether they have an active case of the disease and what treatment they should receive, county health officials said.The Carroll County Health Department administered tuberculosis skin tests to all 120 employees of Martin P. Hill Landscaping on June 13, after learning that a worker there had exhibited symptoms of active tuberculosis.

Officials at the University of Maryland Baltimore County have a sent a letter to students and faculty confirming that someone on campus has been diagnosed with tuberculosis. The letter did not say if it was a student or faculty member who was infected and if the person contracted the disease on campus or somewhere else. UMBC and Baltimore County health officials, who are also working on the case, declined to give further details about the victim, citing privacy concerns. Tuberculosis is an airborne disease in the lungs.

Over the past seven months, Jheri Stratton has been quarantined in her house for a while, ordered to wear a mask to walk her dog, and monitored twice a week by a city Health Department official who watches to ensure that she swallows a handful of pills. She has had to cancel vacations and explain to friends why she can't go out. Since the former waitress at Hooters in downtown Baltimore was diagnosed with active tuberculosis in November, allegedly after she and others contracted the disease from a manager at the Harborplace restaurant, her life has been miserable, Stratton said.

The Howard County Health Department, in conjunction with the school system, sent letters to parents at Oakland Mills High School on Tuesday informing them that a 14-year-old male student at the school is being treated for nonairborne tuberculosis. Health officials say the student was diagnosed with the form of nonpulmonary tuberculosis in February and was removed from the school while he received initial treatment. The student, who is noncommunicable, has since returned to school. It is unknown how the student contracted the disease, but health officials said Thursday that the student did not contract the disease at school.

China has called an urgent meeting that could affect your life, and it's not about the global economic crisis - or global warming. Instead, it's about a quiet global health threat that is more disturbing than you probably assume: the silent spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) around the world. Many global health leaders are in Beijing this week trying to draw attention to the danger, including Bill Gates, whose foundation has given billions of dollars to fight diseases; Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization; and senior representatives from more than two dozen nations, including the United States.

Baltimore has recorded the lowest rate of tuberculosis since it began keeping track of infection rates nearly two centuries ago, city officials said Tuesday. Last year, the city Health Department reported 32 cases of the disease, for a rate of 5 per 100,000 people. That's down from 47 cases in 2007, a rate of 7.4 per 100,000 people. "Thanks to an aggressive tuberculosis control program and effective engagement of community health care workers, the TB rates have steadily declined," Mayor Sheila Dixon said at a news conference at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, the site of a tuberculosis hospital in the late 1800s, when "consumption" was a top killer.

Mimi suffers from tuberculosis in the opera La Boheme, but in reality, there is little that's romantic about the disease. It is the second-leading cause of death from infection in the world (though not in the United States), says Dr. Richard E. Chaisson, professor of medicine, epidemiology and international health at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research. Worldwide, the highest number of TB cases and deaths in recorded history will occur this year, according to Hopkins' Department of Medicine Web site.

One of my close friends is extremely sick with tuberculosis, I thought that tuberculosis was easily cured with antibiotics and was no longer a major health problem.No single infectious disease causes more deaths than tuberculosis (TB).Throughout the world about 1 billion people are infected with tuberculosis; there are 8 million new cases and 3 million deaths annually. The incidence of TB in the United States had been declining for decades until the mid-1930s when an upsurge in cases began.

A Towson University student is being evaluated for a possible case of tuberculosis, Baltimore County health officials said yesterday. The 19-year-old man is no longer on campus and will not return until the completion of testing and any treatment, officials said. University and county health officials said they have no reason to believe that anyone else was exposed to the disease. University officials alerted students, faculty and staff to the possible case through a mass e-mail yesterday, said Carol Dunsworth, Towson's director of university relations.

Howard County health officials are investigating whether the county's first tuberculosis case this year, diagnosed in a student, spread the bacterial illness to staff members or other students at Hammond High School. The students and staff members at the Columbia school were told of the diagnosis yesterday. The county Health Department sent letters Saturday to 50 students who ride the bus with the student, warning them that they might have been exposed and encouraging them to get tested.

The abandoned Henryton Hospital opened in 1923 to treat African-American suffering from tuberculosis. In 1962, it became a facility for the developmentally disabled, and it closed in 1985. After that point, neglect began to claim the facility. A Dec. 19 fire at the Carroll County site has been determined to be arson, officials said. Fires and other acts of vandalism have taken a toll on Henryton for years. The state has put the facility on the market several times but has not found a buyer.