Back to the Dark Ages- Isolation Colonies for TB?

[deanarrca]

I just ran across this article it is sad and frightening at the same time.
apnews.myway.com/article/20070403/D8O8QVCO0.html

It has to do with locking people away for having an incurable disease. Specifically incurable TB.

I was shocked this was occuring.

 

[puzzleannie]

In the height of the TB epidemic, which was virtually worldwide, medicine finally understood the germ theory of disease, and the way TB was spread–it ran rampant in overcrowded conditions (such as 19th c convents and schools), could be spread by close contact and through droplet infection, and through contaminated food, especially milk. thanks to Lister, Pasteur and others the means of fighting and preventing the disease became clear, and doing so became a public health issue. TB was the leading cause of death of the young and young adults–look at all the lives of the saints like Therese, and the 19th century novels–the Brontes all died of TB

One proven means was isolating patients so this was done routinely, and TB sanitoriums were built for this purpose. If you look at very old hospitals in your community, some of them may have started as TB wards. The individual was taken away from the family, because they were a direct danger to the health of everyone there, and quarantined perhaps for months or years until either they recovered or died. Getting out of crowded dirty cities and into clean air of the country especially the prairies of N. America was considered the sovereign cure until antibiotics were developed.

As antibiotics and better sanitation, TB testing including routine chest x-rays for school children (still done in my childhood) eliminated TB from a major threat, the sanitariums closed. New highly-antibiotic strains of TB are now showing up again and we are poised on what could be another epidemic, which could spread quickly for various reasons. Isolation is the only preventative for a person who is not responding to treatment but guess what, there are no more sanitariums, so alternatives must be found. Jail? odd choice since jails were one of the worst incubators of TB in the old days. But if this happens, yes the public health system will have to address it.

 

[Orogeny]

I just ran across this article it is sad and frightening at the same time.
apnews.myway.com/article/20070403/D8O8QVCO0.html

It has to do with locking people away for having an incurable disease. Specifically incurable TB.

I was shocked this was occuring.

It’s sad and unfortunate, but we must be realistic here. The person in question has a strain of a lethal disease that has evolved to be resistant to all known treatments. A disease that is highly contagious. If we don’t isolate that person, many, many people could be infected and die. I don’t see that as going back to the dark ages, I see it as the proper response from a public health standpoint.

Peace

Tim

 

[puzzleannie]

actually isolation was not done in the dark ages for tb, although it was for leprosy and other contagious diseases, like the plague. Isolation as a TB treatment is a late 19th early 20th c public health development.

 

[beckers]

I just ran across this article it is sad and frightening at the same time.
apnews.myway.com/article/20070403/D8O8QVCO0.html

It has to do with locking people away for having an incurable disease. Specifically incurable TB.

I was shocked this was occuring.

why not?He had a choice. He could wear a mask out in public and he choose not to do that so what other options are left for the public health doctors to do? The paitent won’t listen to the doctors and his strand could kill lots of people.

 

[AngelRose81]

Its sad that he has to be isolated but if he doesn’t take into consideration the health of others it may be for the best.

 

[sarita]

My mother is a home nurse and has taken care of TB patients locally. A patient is only involuntarily quarantined if they refuse to comply with local heath authorities. This person refused to wear a mask in public and thus exposed countless others to an incurable illness.

From what mom says, TB and dying from it is extremely unpleasant.

 

[Dale_M]

Jail? odd choice since jails were one of the worst incubators of TB in the old days. But if this happens, yes the public health system will have to address it.

This is a minor point, but in the article the patient was not in jail but in the county hospital. His room was locked and it was normally used for criminals, but I think the important thing is that it seems to have negative pressure ventilation.

Negative pressure rooms are very useful for multi-drug resistant TB and other dangerous diseases which are transmitted through the air. Such rooms work so that every time the door is opened, air is pulled into the room rather than contaminated room air escaping into the rest of the hospital. Jails are very unlikely to have negative pressure rooms - even many hospitals lack them.

deanarrca:

It has to do with locking people away for having an incurable disease

That is part of it. HIV is incurable, as are genital warts or herpes but we don’t lock people up for them. He is locked up because he has a communicable, lethal disease, and from his behavior, is a threat to the community.

 

[Anne1964]

We had a similar case here in NC a few years ago. A man was incarcerated because he refused to take his medication and/or wear a mask in public.

If I remember correctly, after a few days of being locked up he suddenly decided to comply with his medication.

 

[KathleenElsie]

I just ran across this article it is sad and frightening at the same time.
apnews.myway.com/article/20070403/D8O8QVCO0.html

It has to do with locking people away for having an incurable disease. Specifically incurable TB.

I was shocked this was occurring.

He was not , as you pr it, PUT AWAY FOR HAVING TB. He was in-fact placed in custody due to his complete lack of personal responsibility for his actions toward others. He endangered others by not following the medical advice that would make others safe. This form of TB has no cure and is highly contagious.

He would be out in public if he agreed to follow the medical rules to keep his deadly disease from spreading to others. And I must admit that I don’t want my children, grandchildren or others to become deathly ill because some else does not care if we live or die.

 

[jman507]

If those strands get out, the only way of controling the disease would be isolation colonies.

I have to wonder if they’ll start trying greatly increasing the work for more effective vaccines. It can be a tough regiment of antibotics to take correctly, which greatly helps it gain resistance. A few years up the road, the bacteria might get a bit out of control. It’s just a nasty on to control. Tough to kill and easy to transmit. If not, the only way to control it might be isolation colonies.

 

[puzzleannie]

so far most vaccines work against viruses (which of course do not respond to anti-biotics), not bacteria (which do), and TB is caused by a baccilus. any med researchers out there with more up to date info please chime in.

 

[jman507]

so far most vaccines work against viruses (which of course do not respond to anti-biotics), not bacteria (which do), and TB is caused by a baccilus. any med researchers out there with more up to date info please chime in.

There are a few vaccines for bacteria – diptheria, tetnus, HIB. I doubt they put too much funding into vaxs for bacteria, since antibiotics have been working well for a long while.

There is the BCG for TB, which is widely given in the third world. (If you get the skin test, they’ll probably ask about having got that vax, since getting that gives a positive result.) It seems to have an effeciancy that leaves a lot to be desired. If resistant strands start to go around, there could be a lot of problems.

 

[deanarrca]

Yes I agree the one specific individual needs to be locked up if he is refusing to comply with the health department. I was thinking more in general and long term that it is sad. It is just sad to think all your freedoms can be taken away and you could get locked up somewhere for catching a disease. Yes he was willfully endagering people so I agree, but I was looking into the future when possibly large groups of people might be doomed to live out their last days in isolation and have their freedoms taken away etc. I understand it, but think it is sad and would not like to see it in the future. I was thinking more along the lines that it could get out of hand and lead to mass hysteria.

 

[Joe_Stong]

I hate to mention this but since it’s been public info for at least 2 years (cf. CDC et.al.) there are public policies and laws on the books ALREADY for the local, state and federal government to impose travel restriction and outright quarantines of entire cities in the event of a major pandemic of bird flu (or some other illness).

It’s also probably important to note that in 2004 “www.ready.gov” was encouraging Americans to assemble a “3 day” bag of food and water. Now they’ve upped the MINIMUM stockpile to 2 weeks.

Now I’m sure alot of this had to do with Katrina and the fact that even though those who chose to stay were told to bring a week’s supply of food and water they chose to ignore this directive and show up completely unprepared, expecting the government to spoon feed them.

The government obviously (city and state here) simply wasn’t prepared to feed 50,000 people for 2 weeks and the federal government which eventually took over the job also was hard pressed to achieve this.

So we the people (duh) are chiefly responsible for our own common good - if we don’t have the stockpile of food and water and OTC medicines etc. to endure a couple weeks without grocery store runs, no power on earth will be able to come to our rescue. No government of some 2.5 million employees (counting military personnel) could possibly be responsible to shelter, feed, and provide drink to 310 million people.