Free Republic

The little girl wouldn't let go...It didn't matter that she had only met him 12 days earlier...What mattered was that he had held her and that he was going to bring her home, to a quiet cul-de-sac in Northern Virginia, where the shy 4-year-old would live with him, his wife and the 6-year-old boy they had adopted... "Papa, don't go!" she screamed in Cantonese after Scruggs tried to hand her over to the foster family that would care for her until he could return...Finally Scruggs slipped out the door, a day after his wife, Candace Litchford, had made the same...

For the first time in more than a decade, the rate at which residents in Singapore are contracting tuberculosis is on the rise. And more younger people aged below 30 are being hit - a worrying trend that hints at greater spread of the infectious respiratory disease in the community. Last year, 39.8 in every 100,000 Singaporeans and permanent residents contracted it, up from 35.1 in 2007. The number of TB patients grew by 15 per cent to 1,451 last year, up from 1,256 in the previous year. The last time the tuberculosis rate grew was in 1998, when it...

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...

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...

A newly-discovered Roman skeleton could be one of the earliest British victims of tuberculosis, experts believe... The man's remains - which date from the fourth century AD - were found on a construction site at York University. The first known case of TB in Britain is from the Iron Age - but finding cases from Roman times is still rare, especially in the north. Most finds have been confined to the southern half of England. If the new case is confirmed as TB it could provide scientists with a valuable tool to trace the movement of the disease as it...

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.

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...

Associated Press Researchers at MIT believe they've discovered a new weapon in the battle against tuberculosis: Free cell phone minutes. For years, doctors have struggled to get some TB patients to take all their medication, which generally involves a six-month regimen of multiple drugs. Now a student-led group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a way to use cell phones to let patients test themselves. And if the tests show patients are following doctor's orders, they get rewarded with free minutes. "We're piggybacking on one of the bigger rollouts of infrastructure out there, which is wireless technology and...

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...

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...

In a beautiful home filled with mementos of world travel, a 44-year-old Silicon Valley executive reluctantly picks up the telephone to tell several business contacts that he might have infected them with tuberculosis. In a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland, a new mother feels her life slipping away. She is losing her hearing, her feet are going numb and her face carries a rash from the toxic drugs being used to fight the drug-resistant bacteria in her lungs. Her body has dwindled to 87 pounds and she wonders: Would my husband and infant son be better off if I was dead?...

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...

PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa — The Jose Pearson TB Hospital here is like a prison for the sick. It is encircled by three fences topped with coils of razor wire to keep patients infected with lethal strains of tuberculosis from escaping. But at Christmastime and again around Easter, dozens of them cut holes in the fences, slipped through electrified wires or pushed through the gates in a desperate bid to spend the holidays with their families. Patients have been tracked down and forced to return; the hospital has quadrupled the number of guards. Many patients fear they will get out...

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...

WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Cases of tuberculosis that defy existing drugs are being recorded globally at the highest rates ever seen, with parts of the former Soviet Union especially vulnerable, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. In a report based on data from 81 countries, the WHO estimated nearly half a million people a year worldwide become infected with a form of TB resistant to two or more of the primary drugs used to treat it. That number accounts for about 5 percent of the 9 million new TB cases annually. Extensively drug-resistant TB, the form that is...

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,...

BREAKING NEWS updated 9 minutes ago LOS ANGELES - The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sunday recalled 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a Southern California slaughterhouse that is being investigated for mistreating cattle. Officials said it was the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing a 1999 ban of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meats. The federal agency said the recall will affect beef products dating to Feb. 1, 2006, that came from Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., which supplies meat to the federal school lunch program and to some major fast-food chains.This breaking news story will be...

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...

Associated Press CHICAGO (AP) - Health officials are trying to track down American Airlines passengers in 17 states for testing after a California woman flew while sick with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a California woman boarded an American Airlines flight in New Delhi, India, on December 13th. The flight stopped at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport before continuing on to San Francisco. CDC officials are working on tracking down 44 people who sat within two rows of the woman on the flight. She is being treated in isolation at a California...

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...

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...

Most Ancient Case Of Tuberculosis Found In 500,000-year-old Human; Points To Modern Health IssuesView of the inside of a plaster cast of the skull of the newly discovered young male Homo erectus from western Turkey. The stylus points to tiny lesions 1-2 mm in size found along the rim of bone just behind the right eye orbit. The lesions were formed by a type of tuberculosis that infects the brain and, at 500,000 years in age, represents the most ancient case of TB known in humans. (Credit: Marsha Miller, the University of Texas at Austin)" ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) —...

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...

Key senators said a Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis did not use a fake name to enter the country 76 times and take numerous flights, as Homeland Security spokesmen had previously stated. Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican and the panel's ranking member, said that Customs and Border Protection officials had the name and a corrected date of birth by mid-April but that the man continued to cross the border unfettered 21 more times. "He wasn't using an alias,"...

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 last year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times. he Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency was warned by health officials on April 16 that the frequent traveler was infected, but it took the 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 condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Homeland...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The state health officer told members of a new state task force Wednesday that the rising number of Hispanic immigrants in Alabama are bringing with them additional cases of communicable diseases like tuberculosis and chicken pox. Dr. Don Williamson said in 2006 there were 53 cases of tuberculosis reported in Alabama in people who were born in other countries, about half in immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. But Williamson cautioned members of the Joint Patriotic Immigration Commission that tougher rules against illegal immigration might cause sick people to be afraid to seek treatment.

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...

The Michigan Department of Agriculture at long last force-tested and tagged Greg Niewendorp’s twenty head of cattle today. About twenty supporters and six media representatives were in attendance, Charlevoix County Sheriff George Lasater told me late this afternoon.

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...

The slow-motion drama swirling around Greg Niewendorp and his refusal to participate in Michigan’s bovine TB testing program, may be picking up speed.

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...

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...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A man placed in isolation after he was diagnosed with contagious tuberculosis broke a hospital window and fled, health officials said. Unlike the Georgia lawyer who was under a federal quarantine after flying to Europe with what was then believed to be extensively drug-resistant TB, Arkansas health officials said the man who fled has a form of tuberculosis that would respond to treatment. Franklin Greenwood, 50, is still contagious, though, health officials said. Greenwood was placed in isolation at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital on June 29 after he was seen coughing up...

LITTLE ROCK - A man kept in isolation after he was diagnosed with contagious tuberculosis broke a hospital window and fled from his room at a Little Rock hospital. Franklin Greenwood, 50, was placed in isolation on June 29 after he was seen coughing up blood outside of the city's traffic court and was released by a judge to the state Health Department's custody. He left the hospital on July 1. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Greenwood's disappearance in Wednesday's editions. A state health official said Greenwood has a form of tuberculosis that would respond to treatment but that it is...

A Mansfield High School (suburb of Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas) student has been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and the school district is notifying students who may need to be tested. According to the Mansfield ISD Web site, officials sent out letters on Wednesday to parents of students who attended the school in the spring.

Over 100 Poultry Workers in South Carolina Test Positive for TB Acting on reported TB case of one of the workers at the Columbia Farms factory, Health Officials in conjunction with other authorities decided to formally evaluate the entire processing plant and conduct a close-contact investigation. There were 900 workers at this site, but in accordance to a CDC algorithm that assesses risk contacts, officials only tested 286 of the factories employees. Out of this group, 131 exhibited a positive skin test for tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB, Tuberculum Bacillum) is chiefly caused by a species of bacteria called mycobacterium tuberculosis. This...

131 EXPOSED IN GREENVILLE The number of workers exposed to tuberculosis at a Greenville, S.C., chicken plant has grown to 131, but state health officials cautioned Tuesday only one is suspected of having an active form of the infectious disease. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control began testing employees at the House of Raeford Farms plant late last month after the agency was told about the infected worker. So far, 286 employees who have been in contact with the worker have been tested. The percentage of positive cases is believed to be high because many of the plant's...

Judge orders man confined in San Antonio for treatment he had refused since April: PORT ARTHUR — A Port Arthur tuberculosis patient was apprehended Thursday without incident after a judge ordered he be confined and treated at a San Antonio hospital, officials said. Police picked up Lemone Yowman, 32, at a relative's home so he could be taken by ambulance to San Antonio with a police escort, said Maj. John Owens of the Port Arthur Police Department. A judge has ordered that Yowman be confined and undergo treatment at a San Antonio facility, according to court documents and a city...

Tuberculosis is being confirmed as the cause of death of a patient who died at Colorado Springs' Memorial Hospital shortly after arriving at the emergency room on Friday. Officials say the patient was put in an isolation room and air flows controlled as a precautionary measure. Staff and family also wore personal protective gear. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spokesman Mark Salley says it's unlikely the patient's death was from Multi-Drug Resistant T-B, but that has yet to be confirmed. The patient is being identified only as an international student at Colorado State University-Pueblo, who had recently been...

IF it turns out that none of his fellow passengers were actually infected with the dangerous form of tuberculosis he carries, then Andrew Speaker, the young honeymooner who recently eluded government efforts to keep him off commercial flights, may actually have done a favor to public health. His case has brought to light the neglected but growing problem of super drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the ease with which this deadly airborne disease can travel around the world. Federal health officials have recently warned state and city TB treatment programs to expect budget cuts of as much as 25 percent over the...

As the Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous form of tuberculosis began treatment yesterday in Denver, the patient and government officials here and abroad provided sharply divergent accounts of his 12 days of world travel. The accounts seemed to agree only in the missed opportunities to head off what has become an international public health scandal. The patient, Andrew Speaker, has said that public health officials in Fulton County, Ga., told him a trip would not be risky. But those officials said that he had been clearly warned of the dangers. In interviews, public health officials at the county, state and...