2 TB cases linked to homeless shelter in Aurora

The Kane County Health Department has confirmed two active cases of tuberculosis, both with connections to a homeless shelter in west suburban Aurora.
Both patients are in the hospital, receiving treatment. According to Ryan Dowd, executive director of Hesed House, a homeless shelter on River Street, one of the patients is a current guest of the shelter, and was diagnosed last week.
The county Health Department then found a second case, a person who lived at Hesed House until last June, and had not been back since. According to Paul Kuehnert, the department's executive director, health officials are still trying to determine whether the two cases are linked, which would mean they contracted the disease from the same source, or one got it from the other. Health Department officials said these are the only current cases of TB in Kane County.
The Health Department has tested every staff member and longterm resident of Hesed House, and every test has come back negative, according to Kuehnert. The department screened roughly 150 people, searching for symptoms, and tested more than a dozen.
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UV Light Fights Tuberculosis

About tuberculosis
There are two types of TB infection – latent and active. Patients with active TB experience the symptoms of the disease, which include fever, persistent cough, and loss of appetite, and these patients can transmit the disease by coughing. In contrast patients with the dormant, ‘latent’ form of TB do not have symptoms, and are not infectious. About 10% of latent TB patients develop active TB over their lifetimes (although this figure rises to over 40% if they have HIV infection as well). Treatment can prevent many patients with latent TB from progressing to active TB. About 95% of TB patients with drug-sensitive disease can be cured with antibiotics, but this figure is much lower in patients with drug-resistant TB disease.


In Haiti
Every Day is TB Day
More than two billion people, one third of the world’s total population, are infected with TB bacilli, the microbes that cause TB. People living with HIV are at greater risk. For Haiti, much more remains to be done. The statistics above were released as part of the 13th annual report on global control of tuberculosis, produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in a series that started in 1997. The 196 countries and territories that reported data in 2008 account for 99.6% of the world’s estimated number of TB cases and 99.7% of the world’s population.

First, the global picture. Although a cure for TB has existed for more than half a century, it is one of three leading causes of deaths worldwide due to infectious diseases. A total of 1.77 million people died from TB in 2007 (including 456 000 people with HIV), TB thrives on poverty and instability, disproportionately affecting the poorest of the poor. In the United States, on the other hand, TB rates reached a record low in 2008. Even here though TB affected our most vulnerable - minority and immigrant populations.