Posted on 12/27/2009 5:45:56 PM PST by Publius804
LANTANA, Fla. – It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away.
Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood.
I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad."
It was really bad, and not just for him.
Doctors say Juarez's incessant hack was a sign of what they have both dreaded and expected for years — this country's first case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. The Associated Press learned of his case, which until now has not been made public, as part of a six-month look at the soaring global challenge of drug resistance.
Juarez's strain — so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB — has never before been seen in the U.S., according to Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation's leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis is so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it.
"He is really the future," Ashkin said. "This is the new class that people are not really talking too much about. These are the ones we really fear because I'm not sure how we treat them."
Forty years ago, the world thought it had conquered TB and any number of other diseases through the new wonder drugs: Antibiotics. U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart announced it was "time to close the book on infectious diseases and declare the war against pestilence won."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Ping
Maybe the first case on the east coast, but I remember out here in the west of several cases of drug resistant TB at elementary schools in and around Tucson.
bump!
I’ve always wanted to ask: what do you propose? The abolition of travel beyond the borders of the United States?
And exactly why is it we need more illegals and muslims in the USA?
It’s a great time to have zero control of our borders and to be providing even more incentives to illegal immigrants to come here.
You can thank the ‘McKinney/Vinto Act’ for THAT one. MY kids HAVE to issue a ‘blue card’ at school. Illegal immigrant children DON’T.
And not too many years ago, all diseases were going to be wiped out by the wonderful drugs we were coming up with.
I spent the better part of a month in 2 different hoss spittles last summer and feel quite fortunate that I didn’t come out with MRSA or some other equally hideous disease.
Freaking nuts.
In the late 60s I got a tourist visa to come to the US; the medical exams and the x-rays, just for that!!!
Now we are so open and all-inclusive, that is grand.
I tend to agree. This is hyped up xenophobe stuff
No, I advocate controlled immigration with medical tests for entrants, just as we did in the early twentieth and late nineteenth century.
And I don’t have a problem with that at all. Just as long as you understand that a U.S. citizen who travels abroad and gets infected, and is not subject to the same screening, brings this strain of TB back to the States without any difficulty.
You have no idea. Why do you think the idiots in congress are doing the bum’s rush to get this health care fiasco passed?
The cdc is just like any other anagram govt entity, a hackerama filled with political idealogues. This is no different than climategate, just scarier.
There are new and emerging viruses, bacteria and fungi but they are not profitable ..yet.
And the difference is..one IS a citizen and one is not. Therefore, the medical expenses and burdens are acceptable in the case of the citizen and not in the case of a newly arrived immigrant.
That does not appear to be the distinction you are making in your comment #2.
borders? We don’t need no stinking borders....allow the zombies to come in and infect us all. Why do we have a governemnt again? they are not protecting us that is for sure
Not necessarily so.
Drug resistant TB developed here in the US. Drug dependent TB patients sell their medication before taking all of it. TB medication requires that the patient take all of the dose. If you do not, you have begin again with another different drug.
This has been anticipated for about 30 years now. US drug addicts have given us this/
See @ 19. This was caused in the inner cities by US drug addicts.
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