Contagion.

The planet finds ways to cull the herd !!

'...after several visits...' That's part of the problem.

Does the plan to treat people who have this include a plan for when the AB resistant TB develops resistance to that plan or are we still not using foresight?

My husband is a health care provider and, everytime I read an article like this, make me want to hose him off before he comes in the house!

It's funny because this article just looks to Europe. But the same problem is happening in our own backyard. Immigrants from South America infected with XDR-TB (Extensively Drug Resistant TB) are introducing this deadly plague in to our own society. You don't need to travel to India, or some third world country to catch this. It's already here in America. It's been here.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34516639/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/danger-home-rare-form-tb-comes-us/

Situations like this, XDR-TB, highlight the importance of documented immigration in the US. In the old days immigrants were checked for diseases like TB before being allowed to pass on from Ellis Island. Those who were sick were quarantined, and denied entry in to the United States. Today, the US Government practically invites disease ridden immigrants to come from all corners of the world to live illegally and undocuemtned in our cities, towns, and even allows them to attend schools that our children go to.

Ask yourself this.. Does the illegal immigrant cook making your food at your local restaurant have a XDR-TB? Does the child your son or daughter goes to school with who arrived here last year with his/her undocumented parents have XDR-TB? Does the guy picking your food in the field have XDR-TB? Does the maid in your hotel room changing your pillow cases and linen have XDR-TB? Chances are you all may find out sooner than you would like. You can all thank the Federal Government for their complacency on immigration when the problem becomes an even bigger issue.

Think someone can't get in to the country with XDR-TB even if they're told not to come in to the US and there are people looking for them in a post 9/11 world? You'd think with the beefed up security that nobody could slip in to America right?

Think again.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_tuberculosis_scare

With all the international travel these days there is no reason that a doctor should not have been looking for TB in a person who had traveled to India or anywhere else for that matter. I bet the doc didn't even ask the patient any questions, but wrote a script for antibiotics. In, out, no questions asked. After two years of seeing multiple doctors myself with symptoms that were pretty pronounced, I finally found a doc who asked enough questions and found I had cancer. I kept telling docs that I thought I had cancer, and they kept saying, no I was fine, only for me to 2 years later after 6 different docs then found I did have it!

There is NO excuse for this patient not having been diagnosed MUCH earlier, by the first doc she saw! I question where the "epidemic" is.....I think it's in the doctors office!

So then the TB shots we got as kids in the 50's are ineffective against this new epidemic? For sure gonna cancel my vacation to Maldovia.

TB is person to person transmission in close quarters. That is if someone sitting next to you on a long flight is coughing it is an issue.  It is NOT an issue if the maid at your hotel changes your bedsheets has it and you never see her.  It is not like measels.  Transmission rates are not due to lack of bathing, it is living within close proximity to each other and breathing on each other.

To the lady with the health care worker husband. A) your husband should not be wearing his scrubs home and he SHOULD take a shower before interacting with the family but not due to TB--due to other things.   B) If your husband works in an ER hospital setting then yes he would come into contact with TB patients. "IF" your husband got it and was to pass it to you it would be through kissing and breathing on each other not casually through his clothes.

Does anyone with REAL medical information know how tests for the new TB vaccine is going? 

Dying of just about anything beats the living death torture of going to a nursing home.

For those folks who do not read and study the news diligently, the English translation of this story is that the sex slavery trade in Africa, India, and the former Soviet Union countries has spread to Europe at an alarming rate with MDR TB and XDR TB being one of the more obvious consequences . . .

The fact of the matter, as is easily verified at the World Health Organization (WHO) website, is that India has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis infection in the world, as do Africa, Russia, and a few of the satellites of the former Soviet Union, and in all these countries the cost of advanced medicines for treating Multiple Drug Resistant (MDR) and Extremely Drug Resistant (XDR) tuberculosis is so great that patients typically receive little if any treatment, but this is compounded by patients not receiving complete treatment for the most simple and easily treated types of tuberculosis, which inevitably causes simple and easily treated tuberculosis to evolve into difficult, if not impossible, to treat cases, with the result that these countries have alarming rates of MDR and XDR TB cases . . .

However, this does NOT suggest that the London barrister mentioned in the MSNBC.com and Associated Press report was involved in the sex slavery trade, since yet another reality is that when a person is in the contagious or actively communicable phase of tuberculosis all it takes is a 5-micron diameter "foglet" to infect someone in the near vicinity if (a) the person happens to inhale just one 5-micron diameter "foglet" from a cough or sneeze and (b) the 5-micron diameter "foglet" happens to have from 8 to 10 bacilli of Mycobacterium tuberculosis . . .

And it is not just a matter of being in the vicinity of someone who is coughing and sneezing, since simple conversation also propels these 5-micron diameter "foglets", and actually the longest propelling activity is singing, where coughing and sneezing can propel 5-micron diameter "foglets" as far as 10 feet, which provides a clue to how far singing can propel these tiny droplets of potentially deadly bacteria (and viruses, as well) . . .

Toward the goal of putting the 5-micron diameter "foglets", each containing from 8 to 10 bacilli of Mycobacterium tuberculosis into perspective--noting that the droplets need to be inhaled deeply into the lower part of the lung--I did a rather exhaustive series of calculations several years ago in another discussion in what now is called "Newsvine" where there were some molecular biologists and epidemiologists, which is where I got the information about the minimal 8 to 10 bacilli infection requirement, and after digging deeply into the past and remembering a bit of information about Avogadro's Number, I was able to combine these bits of information with some fascinating data about fog, which eventually led to the amazing insight that the volume of 5-micron diameter fog droplets--where each droplet contains at least 8 to 10 Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli--in the rotating cylinder of a standard concrete mixing truck (approximately 8 cubic yards) is more than sufficient to infect every person on this planet with tuberculosis, although in practice it would be pretty goofy, since statistically even if the 8 cubic yards of active tuberculosis "fog" were released in the air conditioning ducts of a Walmart Supercenter, it is entirely possible that nobody in the store would contract tuberculosis, but so what . . .

So what!

The important thing is that if Regis Philbin knocks on your door with a check for one million dollars if you can tell him how many 5-micron droplets of fog the rotating cylinder of a standard concrete mixing truck will hold, then there you are, because it will hold at least SIX BILLION 5-micron diameter droplets of fog . . .

Summarizing, the reality at the dawn of the early-21st century is that if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and are accosted by a group of troupe of folk singers from Africa, India, or any of the countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as anyone from England, then the best strategy is first (a) to don your N95/P95 OSHA-approved respirator and then (b) to run away and hide, for sure!

For sure! :-o

The fact that we have not seen these diseases in years does not mean the have disappeared. Our basic problem seems to be a series of specialists who have not had any exposure to these illnesses in their careers and have a difficult time recognizing the symptoms. Had this happened in 1880, the doctor probably would have known. Finally, I would point out in defence of our medical practitioners, death is a fact, not a medical failure.

3rd world immigrants comming into the country without sufficient screening.  You do not pick up TB in a day or so. It is not like a cold or flu virus.  The US has extermely good exams for immigrants to screen to exposure to TB.  With all the illegals from Mexico, the Hispanic areas are seeing TB coming into the USA.  But hey, to discuss that is politically incorrect.  PC will end up killing millions of people in the end.

That is troublesome news considering what damage TB did a long long time ago.
I wonder if any of those countries offer immunizations for kids?

I myself was immunized against TB and American officials did not take into consideration that once a person is immunized, then they might test positive for the disease even though they don't have it.

I could only imagine what confusion that would cause.

Usually I am not that concerned about these news, because a lot of the traditional medicines are derived from plant sources and if someone researches it a bit alternatives can be found. Sometimes those are even more effective.

TB is highly contegious and there is the last sort remedy of having an operation to remove part(s) of the lung(s). Where is Homeland Security? The scanners go not even x-ray the chest (lungs)an easy way of profiling of not letting the people having TB on the plane. There was a casse of a young US man who crossed the border with his name on the'red' list- highly contagious form -CDC.TB spreads thru air- one could wear a mask in case there are cases in US- avoid crowded places and inform yourself- go to CDC website-WHO website.

BCG, is NOT a vaccine against TB.  it is primarily used in children to assist their immune system in containing the disease.  Once in the Body, you really never get cured of it or rid of it.  It is contained by your immune system.  So if in later life you have a disease that limits your immune system, the TB can take off again.

As for this person not being diagnosed correctly, in todays day and age, that is almost inexcusable.   We post in all our intake areas in the staff area "Think TB" just to remind them.  And I work in a part of the US were we see few TB cases.