DiabloViejo
07-08-2012, 11:59 PM
<span style="color: #000099">Drugs to treat a simple case of TB cost abround $500, but if a patient does not take them regularly and the strain becomes drug-resistant, the cost of treatment skyrockets to $275,000. Meanwhile, Florida closed it's one and only TB hospital.</span>
"According to the Post, by April the outbreak had been linked to thirteen deaths, with 99 individuals infected, including six children. Most of those affected were poor black men, ten of whom simply wasted away from the disease before getting treatment or were not treated in time to stop its progression.
Now it is estimated that as many as 3000 people may have been exposed to the strain over the past two years, mainly in Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, jails, and a mental health clinic. Only 253 of those have been found, of whom one-third have tested positive for TB exposure."-- (Raw Story.com)
Worst TB outbreak in 20 years kept secret
State rushes closure of its only TB hospital in Lantana
Updated: 6:10 p.m. Sunday, July 8, 2012 | Posted: 10:52 a.m. Sunday, July 8, 2012
By Stacey Singer
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE — The CDC officer had a serious warning for Florida health officials in April: A tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was one of the worst his group had investigated in 20 years. Linked to 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, it would require concerted action to stop.
That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after <u>Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years.</u>
As health officials in Tallahassee turned their focus to restructuring, Dr. Robert Luo’s 25-page report describing Jacksonville’s outbreak — and the measures needed to contain it – went unseen by key decision makers around the state.<u> At the health agency, an order went out that the TB hospital must be closed six months ahead of schedule.
</u>
Had they seen the letter, decision makers would have learned that 3,000 people in the past two years may have had close contact with contagious people at Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, an outpatient mental health clinic and area jails. Yet only 253 people had been found and evaluated for TB infection, meaning Florida’s outbreak was, and is, far from contained.
The public was not to learn anything until early June, even though the same strain was appearing in other parts of the state, including Miami.
Tuberculosis is a lung disease more associated with the 18th century than the 21st, referred to as “consumption” in Dickensian times because its victims would grow gaunt and wan as their lungs disintigrated and they slowly died. The CDC investigator described a similar fate for 10 of the 13 people who died in Jacksonville.
Read the rest here: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/worst-tb-outbreakin-20-years-kept-secret/nPpLs/
http://www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/FCFD11E0-387E-4EF8-9E15-56C7DF1CBC76/0/tuberculosisofthelungspicture.jpg
"According to the Post, by April the outbreak had been linked to thirteen deaths, with 99 individuals infected, including six children. Most of those affected were poor black men, ten of whom simply wasted away from the disease before getting treatment or were not treated in time to stop its progression.
Now it is estimated that as many as 3000 people may have been exposed to the strain over the past two years, mainly in Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, jails, and a mental health clinic. Only 253 of those have been found, of whom one-third have tested positive for TB exposure."-- (Raw Story.com)
Worst TB outbreak in 20 years kept secret
State rushes closure of its only TB hospital in Lantana
Updated: 6:10 p.m. Sunday, July 8, 2012 | Posted: 10:52 a.m. Sunday, July 8, 2012
By Stacey Singer
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE — The CDC officer had a serious warning for Florida health officials in April: A tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was one of the worst his group had investigated in 20 years. Linked to 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, it would require concerted action to stop.
That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after <u>Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years.</u>
As health officials in Tallahassee turned their focus to restructuring, Dr. Robert Luo’s 25-page report describing Jacksonville’s outbreak — and the measures needed to contain it – went unseen by key decision makers around the state.<u> At the health agency, an order went out that the TB hospital must be closed six months ahead of schedule.
</u>
Had they seen the letter, decision makers would have learned that 3,000 people in the past two years may have had close contact with contagious people at Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, an outpatient mental health clinic and area jails. Yet only 253 people had been found and evaluated for TB infection, meaning Florida’s outbreak was, and is, far from contained.
The public was not to learn anything until early June, even though the same strain was appearing in other parts of the state, including Miami.
Tuberculosis is a lung disease more associated with the 18th century than the 21st, referred to as “consumption” in Dickensian times because its victims would grow gaunt and wan as their lungs disintigrated and they slowly died. The CDC investigator described a similar fate for 10 of the 13 people who died in Jacksonville.
Read the rest here: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/worst-tb-outbreakin-20-years-kept-secret/nPpLs/
http://www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/FCFD11E0-387E-4EF8-9E15-56C7DF1CBC76/0/tuberculosisofthelungspicture.jpg