March 24 is World TB (Tuberculosis) Day. It’s a good time to remember that although TB might be forgotten by most, it is not gone. In the early 1900s TB killed one out of every seven people living in the United States and Europe. Even though that is no longer the case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that today about a third of the world’s population is living with TB. Statistics from the CDC tell us that in 2015 there were almost 10,000 TB cases in the United States and worldwide, 10.4 million people became sick with TB and there were 1.8 million TB-related deaths.
You cannot get TB from surfaces such as clothes, drinking glasses, shaking hands or eating utensils. TB is a bacteria that is spread through the air when someone with active TB of the lungs or throat coughs, laughs, sings, or sneezes. People near the sick person can breathe in the germs. TB germs can live in your body without making you sick. This is called latent TB. This means you have inactive (sleeping) TB germs in your body and they cannot be passed on. However, if they become active and multiply, you will get sick with TB disease and can spread the TB germ.
Most often, TB bacteria grow in the lungs causing symptoms such as a bad cough, chest pain and coughing up blood or sputum. Other symptoms are often weakness, fatigue, weight loss, chills, fever and night sweats. Active TB is treated by taking antibiotics for 6 to 9 months. Even though people can feel better after a few weeks of treatment, they can develop Multidrug resistant TB (MDR-TB) if they stop taking antibiotics early. MDR-TB takes longer to treat with more expensive drugs which have more side-effects. Extremely drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) develops when MDR-TB second-line drugs are also misused or mismanaged.
During 2016, 15 known cases of latent and 3 cases of active TB were identified in Kendall County and followed by Kendall County Health Department. Kendall County Health Department conducts contact investigation and case management for TB cases, offers TB testing and provides treatment, if needed, to those at high risk for developing TB. “Directly observed therapy” (DOT) provided to persons experiencing active tuberculosis supports these patients in taking their medication as prescribed for cure and to prevent the development of multi-drug resistant TB, which is a growing international threat. For more information on tuberculosis, please contact the Kendall County Health Department at (630) 553-9100 or visit us at www.kendallhealth.org.
