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Travel advisory warns of severe respiratory illness in Mexico 20 die from severe respiratory illness in Mexico Canadians who have recently returned from Mexico should be on alert for flu-like symptoms that could be connected to a severe respiratory illness, federal health officials said Thursday in issuing a travel advisory. A severe respiratory illness appears to have infected 137 people in south and central areas of Mexico, with cases concentrated in Mexico City and three other areas, including 20 deaths, the Public Health Agency of Canada said. In the United States, health officials in Texas and California were scrambling this...

The cases at the school and bars triggered fear and hundreds of screenings, and public health officials say it's a trend they're closely watching, particularly because San Francisco continues to have the highest rate of TB of any metro area in the country.

San Francisco - Even as tuberculosis rates decline in the United States, drug-resistant strains of the disease showing up in states with large immigrant populations and are becoming increasingly hard to treat. Researchers are concerned about this trend while funding for labor-intensive disease control programs is being cut in cities such as San Francisco, which has the highest TB rates in the country.

Enlarge ImageBreathtaking discovery? TB hospitals like this one in Guatemala increasingly see patients with drug-resistant strains and badly need new options. Credit: Malcolm Linton Thanks to a barroom conversation, researchers may have stumbled on a powerful drug combination to battle antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis (TB), a growing threat throughout the world. New work suggests that meropenem and clavulanate, both of which are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fight bacterial infections, tame some of the most virulent TB strains. An increasing number of people have multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis. Last year, the World...

A Mexican citizen with a potentially deadly form of tuberculosis was allowed to cross the border into El Paso, Texas at least 20 times last year due to poor communication between government agencies, the El Paso Times reported. According to a report from the U.S. General Accountability Office, Customs and Border Protection officials at the Bridge of Americas waited 14 days to notify Department of Homeland Security senior officials that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requested the CBP's assistance in the 2007 TB case. The delay allowed the Mexican citizen, who was under treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, to...

LONDON, England -- Many people think of tuberculosis as being a disease from the past. The truth is far from it: Tuberculosis is mutating into dangerous new strains for which there is no known cure. more photos » One of the most frightening strains is XDR-TB, which stands for extensively drug-resistant TB. Unlike less virulent strains, XDR-TB does not respond to the antibiotics that are usually used to treat TB. The disease is virtually incurable and threatens to become a pandemic. About 40,000 new cases of XDR-TB emerge every year, the World Health Organization estimates. Award-winning photojournalist James Nachtwey, who...

Extensively drug-resistant disease deadlier and more common than thought, researchers find FRIDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), is becoming more common and more deadly than previously thought, new research shows. People with XDR-TB are three times more likely to die than patients with other forms of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), according to the findings, published in the second November issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Researchers reviewed medical records of more than 1,400 patients in South Korea with both types of tuberculosis. MDR-TB patients who didn't respond to ofloxacin and at least...

Ontario health officials are searching for 27 people who may have been exposed to tuberculosis while travelling on a Greyhound bus from Toronto to Windsor on Aug. 31. There's a "moderate risk" they contracted the disease, public health officials said Thursday. A passenger on the bus was sick with the tuberculosis and may have spread it by coughing while in close proximity to the other bus passengers. The passenger, identified only as a woman with a Canadian passport, was detained by American custom officials at the border between Windsor and Detroit. Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Kaiser Permanente is contacting 960 mothers whose babies may have been exposed to a health care worker in San Francisco who has an active case of tuberculosis. The worker was assigned to the postpartum unit in the maternity ward of Kaiser's San Francisco Medical Center to care for mothers and infants. (snip)

Kaiser Permanente is contacting 960 mothers whose babies may have been exposed to a health care worker in San Francisco who has an active case of tuberculosis. The worker was assigned to the postpartum unit in the maternity ward of Kaiser's San Francisco Medical Center to care for mothers and infants. Kaiser officials say the infection risk for patients is very low, but testing will be provided along with treatment if necessary.

Kaiser Permanente is contacting 960 mothers whose babies may have been exposed to a health care worker in San Francisco who has an active case of tuberculosis. The worker was assigned to the postpartum unit in the maternity ward of Kaiser's San Francisco Medical Center to care for mothers and infants. Kaiser officials say the infection risk for patients is very low, but testing will be provided along with treatment if necessary. Kaiser also is notifying 115 employees who may have been exposed. The Oakland health maintenance organization learned of the worker's infection Aug. 18. The part-time night shift employee...

An estimated 750 to 1,000 Somali refugees are living in Emporia, a magnet because of jobs at the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant. Many have latent tuberculosis. H/T to Texas Fred and his comment thread. Tyson Foods' blatant disregard for the institutions of America is worse than we thought - and it stretches outside just the Shelbyville, TN plant. Here's how the Topeka Capital-Journal under the heading "Somalis arrive in Emporia with tuberculosis" describes the "exotic, new arrivals:" EMPORIA — When hundreds of Somali refugees began showing up to work at the meatpacking plant, nurses Lori Torres and Renee Hively were...

A study published on the July 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association called for more aggressive action against tuberculosis, after it had discovered an increase in the number of foreigners in the US infected with TB. Although TB cases in the US dropped 45 percent between 1996 and 2006 (from more than 25,000 to less than 14,000), according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s statistics, there was a five percent increase in TB cases among immigrant populations living in the US during the same period, Dr. Kevin P. Cain head of the CDC’s...

Mastodons Driven to Extinction by Tuberculosis, Fossils Suggest Kimberly Johnson for National Geographic News October 3, 2006 Tuberculosis was rampant in North American mastodons during the late Ice Age and may have led to their extinction, researchers say. Mastodons lived in North America starting about 2 million years ago and thrived until 11,000 years ago—around the time humans arrived on the continent—when the last of the 7-ton (6.35-metric-ton) elephantlike creatures died off. Scientists Bruce Rothschild and Richard Laub pieced together clues to the animals' widespread die-off by studying unearthed mastodon foot bones. Rothschild first noticed a telltale tuberculosis lesion on...

Stone man. This partial skull of a 500,000-year-old human was found in a slab of travertine from a quarry like this one in Turkey.Credit: John Kappelman/University of Texas, Austin Workers at a travertine factory near Denizli, Turkey, were startled recently when they sawed a block of the limestone for tiles and discovered part of a human skull. Now, it appears they unwittingly exposed fossilized remains of a long-sought species of human that lived 500,000 years ago, researchers say. Although only four skull fragments were found, the fossil also reveals the earliest case of tuberculosis. The Middle East has long been...

A rare form of tuberculosis caused by illegal, unpasteurized dairy products, including the popular queso fresco cheese, is rising among Hispanic immigrants in Southern California and raising fears about a resurgence of a strain all but eradicated in the U.S. Cases of the Mycobacterium bovis strain of TB have increased in San Diego county, particularly among children who drink or eat dairy foods made from the milk of infected cattle, a study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases shows. But the germ can infect anyone who eats contaminated fresh cheeses sold by street vendors, smuggled across the Mexican border or...

Researchers have found a potentially deadly strain of tuberculosis infection spreading through Latino communities in Southern California and suspect the disease is being imported from Mexico in unpasteurized cheese. Health officials in Orange County, though, say they have not seen any cases of the rare strain of tuberculosis in at least five years. They credit a long-running campaign to educate people about the dangers of eating unlabeled cheese and other dairy products. Tuberculosis is an infection of the lungs that kills nearly 2 million people worldwide every year. The strain of tuberculosis that researchers found in San Diego County is...

"No longer a social hub of white convalescents, about one-third of the patients are from Latin America, Haiti or other parts of the Third World -- where TB claims 3 million lives yearly. Half suffer from AIDS, a disease that has "partnered up" with the TB bacterium that thrives in a weakened immune system, Ashkin said." ... "Jim Green of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a constitutional challenge to the state's TB statutes in the late 1980s. He said the state regularly detained patients and banished them to A.G. Holley without access to attorneys or other freedoms. "There were...

Public health experts are cautioning people not to consume unpasteurized milk and cheese from Mexico after a new study found that those products have caused hundreds of individuals – mostly Latinos – to become sick over the years with a hardy form of tuberculosis. Their warning is part of county government's ongoing efforts to discourage consumers from buying queso fresco, or “fresh cheese,” and other unpasteurized dairy items from unlicensed street vendors and shops not certified by health regulators. Between 1994 and 2005, the county's Tuberculosis Control Program reported 3,291 cases of active infection. About 8 percent of those patients...

Student diagnosed with active strain 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...

Call it one price of globalism. Last year, tuberculosis increased in four of the Bay Area's five largest counties, and the San Jose area in 2006 had the highest TB rate of any large American metro area, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the California Department of Public Health. San Francisco, after an outbreak of TB among Latino day workers in the Mission district, has the highest TB rate of any...

The Texas Department of State Health Services has identified two suspected cases of tuberculosis at UTB-TSC and will hold a clinic Wednesday for people who could have been exposed to the disease. "Only those people contacted by the Department of Health should go," said Karen Fuss-Sommer, outgoing interim director of Student Health Services at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College. The clinic will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Jacob Brown Auditorium. "Tuberculosis is only a moderately infectious disease. It normally requires much longer exposure and close contact," said Dr. Brian Smith, regional...

TB cases in Seattle and King County have increased and, in 2007, reached a 30-year-record high of 161 active disease cases - three-quarters of them from people born in other countries.

New 30-year high in tuberculosis cases March 24 is World TB Day Thursday, March 20, 2008 KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON - Tuberculosis (TB) takes two million lives worldwide every year, and World TB Day on March 24 is an opportunity to focus on solutions to the devastating global epidemic. Locally, 161 cases were reported in 2007, a new 30-year high, serving as a stark reminder that TB also remains a significant challenge in King County.Today’s cases are increasingly among the foreign born. Also disproportionately represented are African Americans, Asian /Pacific Islanders, American Indian/Alaskan Natives, Latinos, the homeless and those living...

Santa Clara County - and all other large Bay Area counties - saw a jump in new tuberculosis cases in 2007, even as California saw its overall caseload decline. TB increased substantially in Santa Clara, San Francisco, Alameda and San Mateo counties, which collectively had almost one-quarter of California's 2,726 cases. San Francisco now has the highest TB rate in the state, but Santa Clara County is close on its heels - ranking third.

LONDON: Business leaders across the globe, including India, have agreed that tuberculosis, historically one of the world’s biggest killers, poses one of the gravest silent threats to the private sector and needs to be tackled on a war footing if people of prime working age, particularly in fast-growing developing countries, are not to succumb to the disease. The extraordinary compact between big businesses worldwide was organised here by the World Economic Forum and attended by companies like Reliance, which say they realised the spreading threat of TB, once called the 'white plague', five years ago. The WEF report found that...

Drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in parts of the former Soviet Union have reached the highest rates ever recorded globally, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. The rates could soar even higher, spreading the potentially fatal disease elsewhere, a top W.H.O. official said, releasing findings from the largest global survey of the problem. The highest rate was in Baku, Azerbaijan, where 22.3 percent of new tuberculosis cases were resistant to the standard anti-TB drug regimen during the survey period, from 2002 to 2006. That exceeded the previous high of 14.2 percent, in Kazakhstan. Drug-resistant TB is widespread in the Inner Mongolia and...

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is spreading even faster than medical experts had feared, the World Health Organization warned in report issued Tuesday. The rate of TB patients infected with the drug-resistant strain topped 20 percent in some countries, the highest ever recorded, the U.N. agency said. Globally, there are about 500,000 new cases of drug-resistant TB every year, about 5 percent of the 9 million new TB cases. In the United States, 1.2 percent of TB cases were multi-drug resistant. Of those, 1.9 percent were extensively drug-resistant. There's a huge, gross discrepancy there if they are then reporting 25 percent of the...

AP Medical Writer Drug-resistant tuberculosis is spreading even faster than medical experts had feared, the World Health Organization warned in report issued Tuesday. The rate of TB patients infected with the drug-resistant strain topped 20 percent in some countries, the highest ever recorded, the U.N. agency said. "Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable to see rates like this," said Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of WHO's "Stop TB" department. "This demonstrates what happens when you keep making mistakes in TB treatment." Though the report is the largest survey of drug-resistant TB, based on information collected between 2002 and 2006,...

Ancient bones may hold key By Emily Pykett Ancient human remains held in Portsmouth's museum archives are set to be DNA-tested for signs of tuberculosis. Skeletons which have been dug up in the city during developments, some dating back to the Bronze Age, will now form a vital part of new research into TB. Academics from Durham and Manchester universities have asked permission to remove bits of bone and teeth to analyse as part of their research project into how tuberculosis evolved through the ages. The remains of two ancient city dwellers, one which is known to have suffered TB...

Costs public thousands in care An illegal immigrant from Mexico with tuberculosis cost the public thousands of dollars in unreimbursed health care this past year after Yavapai County Community Health Services workers spent two months overseeing the patient's TB care before the patient died of other medical complications. County officials estimate that it cost somewhere between $5,305 to $8,564 to care for the patient and to test the people who came in contact with the person. If any of those people eventually come down with TB, the cost to the county will increase. County officials said because the person -...

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. --A Mexican teenager who was jailed after refusing treatment for tuberculosis has been deported. Immigration and Customers Enforcement spokesman Richard Rocha said Tuesday that 18-year-old Francisco Santos and his mother, Enriqueta Palacios, returned to Mexico December 9th. Both were illegal immigrants. Santos, a day laborer, had been living at home in Duluth and receiving antibiotic treatments for active tuberculosis by the Gwinnett County Health Department since his release from jail in September. Health officials decided Santos should be jailed on August 24th when he refused to accept treatment for an active, contagious case of TB and then threatened...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Health officials were searching Monday for dozens of airline passengers who may have come in contact with a 30-year-old woman infected with a hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis on a flight from India. The 30-year-old woman, who authorities declined to identify, was being treated at a Bay Area hospital. Officials said the chances that she had infected anyone else were minimal. The woman arrived in San Francisco on Dec. 13 aboard an American Airlines flight that she boarded in New Delhi. The flight stopped in Chicago before continuing to San Francisco International. "She did have symptoms on...

Health Authorities Check 44 Passengers On Flight From India To Chicago CHICAGO (STNG) ― Forty-four American Airlines passengers in 17 states -- including Illinois -- are being tracked down for testing after U.S. health authorities learned a woman on a flight from India to Chicago was suffering from a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, officials said Friday. The 30-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif., woman was diagnosed with the deadly disease in India in August, authorities said. She was a passenger on Flight 293 from Delhi to O'Hare Airport to San Francisco on Dec. 13. "She certainly knew she had TB," said Dr. Marty...

A 30-year-old Sunnyvale woman, recently back from a stay in India, is in an isolation unit at Stanford Hospital with a tough-to-treat strain of tuberculosis, and health officials are scrambling to find any people with whom she may have come into close contact. The woman, whose name has not been released, was reportedly diagnosed with multidrug-resistant TB while in India and was being treated for the disease before she returned to the Bay Area on Dec. 13. "She was sick when she got on her airplane," said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for Santa Clara County's Public Health Department...."She finally made...

PALA ALTO -- Health officials are looking for anyone who may have come into contact with a Santa Clara County woman under quarantine after becoming infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis. They say the 30-year-old Sunnyvale woman, who's not being identified, has a form of TB that is considered a public health problem, because it's difficult to treat and has a high death rate. She's being treated at Stanford hospital in Palo Alto. Health experts say a situation like this one has the potential for disaster

<p>A Santa Clara County resident infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis flew back to the United States earlier this month without alerting authorities of her illness - potentially threatening fellow passengers and people at Stanford Hospital's emergency room with whom she came into contact. Now public health officials are trying to alert those who may be at risk.</p>

Alabama health officials have identified 212 workers who have tested positive for tuberculosis at a single poultry plant owned by one of the largest processors in the U.S. In two batteries of skin tests last month, given to 765 fresh processing employees at the Decatur, Ala., plant owned by Wayne Farms LLC by the State Department of Public Health's Tuberculosis Control Division, 28 percent were found to be infected, including one with active tuberculosis disease, which is contagious. Doctors have yet to evaluate X-rays for 165 current workers who tested positive to determine if any more are contagious. The testing...

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...

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten - Dozens of people in St. Maarten are being treated for latent tuberculosis after health officials warned that they may have been exposed to the illness by a stripper infected with an active form of the disease. At least 40 people tested positive after the health department treated an exotic dancer from the Dominican Republic several months ago and sent her home, according to a government news release issued Friday. Health officials struggled to identify those exposed, launching a public campaign to urge anyone who had contact with the woman to seek treatment. They now believe they...

Sen. Joe Lieberman wants to know how a Mexican with tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times. Capitol Hill lawmakers yesterday called for an investigation into why federal officials knowingly allowed a Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of TB to repeatedly board planes and cross U.S. borders. The Centers for Disease Control and Department of Homeland Security allowed a Mexican known to be infected with a highly drug-resistant form of TB to cross the border 76 times and board an airplane without detection. In addition to the delay in issuing a warning to border inspectors, a week...

By Sara A. Carter and Audrey Hudson - A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the past year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency was warned by health officials on April 16 that the frequent traveler was infected, but it took Homeland Security officials more than six weeks to issue a May 31 alert to warn its own border inspectors, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke on the...

A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the past year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency was warned by health officials on April 16 that the frequent traveler was infected, but it took Homeland Security officials more than six weeks to issue a May 31 alert to warn its own border inspectors, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Homeland...

An attorney for a Phoenix man locked up in a hospital jail ward and treated like an inmate says her client has left the country. Doctors ruled recently that Robert Daniels was no longer contagious with tuberculosis after he underwent lung surgery while being treated at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center. He had been living in a Phoenix-area motel under monitoring by Maricopa County Public Health officials for the past few weeks. Attorney Linda Cosme said Daniels sent her an e-mail from Moscow after arriving there on a flight Sunday. "He apologized," Cosme said. "Essentially, he could not...

Remember the illegal alien TB carrier in Atlanta? They’re letting him go and trusting him to show up for a deportation hearing in a few weeks. Yes, really. It happens all the time. That misplaced trust is why we have hundreds of thousands of deportation fugitives on the loose today. The “notice to appear” letter that the article mentions here is known in open-borders circles as a “run letter.” As in: Don’t actually do what the letter orders you to do. Just run!

Lawrenceville, Ga. (AP) -- Officials started taking steps to deport a Mexican teenager who was jailed after refusing treatment for tuberculosis. Francisco Santos, 17, has acknowledged to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that he is in the country illegally, Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said Wednesday. County health officials jailed Santos last week after he refused treatment for an active, contagious case of tuberculosis and threatened to travel to Mexico, a move that could expose more people to the potentially fatal disease. Santos, who lives in Duluth, has since started taking medicine, but he will remain jailed at least...

Santos he had tuberculosis Friday, health officials said the Gwinnett County 17-year-old refused to believe it. Then the wiry, dark-haired youth refused to submit to any treatment. Worse, he said he was walking out of the Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville and heading back to his home country of Mexico, officials said. (ENLARGE) Francisco Santos lives in Norcross with at least one parent and several younger siblings, records show. "I think he was scared," said David Will, attorney for the Gwinnett County Board of Health. Gwinnett health officials found themselves in a bind. They had a person with a case...

Some politicians and farming community members have reacted angrily to a High Court decision to quash a destruction order on a "sacred" bullock Shambo. Shambo, who lives at the Skanda Vale multi-faith temple in Carmarthenshire, tested positive for bovine TB after a routine screening. A High Court judge ruled that the assembly government acted unlawfully in ordering his slaughter. The Farmers' Union of Wales (FUW) said it could set back disease control. "This ludicrous ruling contradicts the principles upon which successful TB eradication programmes throughout the world have been based for generations," said Evan R Thomas from the FUW. "It...

Uproar as Shambo the sacred bull is reprieved By Richard Alleyne  Last Updated: 2:57am BST 17/07/2007 Moo tube: Shambo's webcamFarmers have condenmed a "ludicrous" High Court decision to reprieve a bull infected with TB because it was worshipped by a religious community.   Shambo was to be destroyed in line with agricultural safeguards after testing positive for bovine TB   Shambo, a six-year-old Friesian, was to be destroyed in line with agricultural safeguards after testing positive for bovine tuberculosis.The decision was overturned by a High Court judge who said that the slaughter would contravene the human rights of the Skanda...

MONTREAL (AP) - Nine people filed a $1.3 million lawsuit Thursday against the globe- trotting tuberculosis patient for possibly exposing them to the disease on a commercial flight from Prague to Montreal. Montreal lawyer Anlac Nguyen filed the motion in Quebec Superior Court on behalf of seven Canadians and two natives of the Czech Republic. Eight were passengers on the flight with Andrew Speaker and the ninth is a brother and roommate of one of the passengers. Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta personal injuries attorney, was in Europe when he learned tests showed he had an extremely drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis...