(Cushing) – State and local health officials are emphasizing that there is NOT an “outbreak” of Tuberculosis in Cushing. For about three weeks, the Payne County Health Department and Oklahoma State Department of Health have been investigating a single “active” case of TB in a student who attended Cushing High School. But the very mention of “TB” has created a bit of a scare based on misconceptions about it.
Dr. Phillip Lindsey, MD, from the State Health Department says TB has been around since the cavemen. But for centuries, people didn’t know how it was truly contracted, and had no way to treat it. But diagnosis and treatment of TB has improved dramatically to the point it can be detected and treated fairly routinely. The days of the sanitarium are long gone.
But Dr. Lindsey says that misconceptions still persist, even among some doctors.
“Tuberculosis is a very slow growing bacteria, and a very common infection throughout the world. Keep in mind, that one-third of human beings on the planet have a positive skin test, which means they have been exposed, and developed an immune reaction to the organism. In Oklahoma, at least 150 thousand people in our state right now are harboring tuberculosis in a dormant state, and the vast majority of these people never get sick.”
And therein lies some of the confusion about tuberculosis. In medical nomenclature, a positive skin test is called an “infection”.
Lindsey says “There is a big difference between tuberculosis infection, and tuberculosis disease, and that is where I think we have problems communicating. People think that by having a positive skin test or having been around somebody that you have acquired the infection that you can then go transmit it someone. It doesn’t happen that way, ever.”
“The only way that the organism can be transmitted to another person is if the person with tuberculosis has active tuberculosis, meaning that they are sick and that the organism is growing.”
“They can cough it out, and it lingers in the air temporarily, and people who are around that air right after the person coughs it out can then inhale it, and they might get a positive skin test but that is the only way it can be transmitted. So people with positive skin test cannot transmit the infection to others….ever, if all they have is a positive skin test.”
Lindsey says that the student who had the active case has been treated and is no longer contagious.
Payne County Health Department Administrator Annette O’Connor says that most people that have gotten a letter have come into the Health Department, but there are a few that remain.
O’Connor says more than 400 people have been tested, and only 293 tests had been read. About 45 per cent have had a positive skin test. The testing is being done at no cost to those being tested.
Cushing High School Principle Jim Lauerman says both the State Health Department and Payne County Health Departments have done a good job. “They have been fantastic. We’ve worked with getting the letters out to everyone as we’ve gone to each circle, and tested, and found out we needed to go to a different circle, and then a different circle, and now we’re out to the whole school.
“Our number one responsibility is to the students” and added later, “Every student deserves an education, and every student deserves to be safe…and everyone will be.”
Lauerman noted he is one of the hundreds who came up with a positive skin test. Lauerman said “like Dr. Lindsey and Annette both said, we have ways of taking care of it so you don’t have to worry about it. “
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