The U.S. needs to test more foreign-born for Tuberculosis
Researchers suggested Tuesday that all
foreign-born people living in the United States be tested for latent
tuberculosis infections if the United States is to be successful in eliminating
the disease.
Researchers suggested Tuesday that all foreign-born people living in the United States be tested for latent tuberculosis infections if the United States is to be successful in eliminating the disease.
Currently, recommendations call for those foreign-born residents who have been in the United States for five years or less be targeted for tuberculin skin testing and treatment of latent TB infection.
Paradoxically, the need to expand testing comes at a time when budgets for tuberculosis prevention are being cut, David Cohn, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, told United Press International.
Dr. Kevin Cain…and colleagues were investigating why the number of annual cases reported in U.S.-born persons declined by 93 percent from 1993 to 2004, while foreign-born cases increased by 5 percent. Overall, the rate of tuberculosis cases in the United States is 4.9 per 100,000 people.
“Twenty-five percent of all reported tuberculosis cases in the United States are among foreign-born persons who have lived in the United States for more than five years,” said Cain. “There is no policy to test foreign-born persons for latent tuberculosis infection before entering the United States, or to test them after they have lived here for more than five years.
As Professor Cohn notes in the article, “there are many who fall through the cracks, including, of course, long-term undocumented aliens.” And nothing, of course, is proposed by our public health services to deal with that fact.
Posted: Thu - January 4, 2007 at 01:12 PM