Tuberculosis

Feb 27, 2009

(CIDRAP News) – A Canadian study raises questions about the value of formal "fit testing" for the respirators worn by healthcare workers to protect them from airborne pathogens, suggesting that it does little good for workers who don't routinely wear the devices.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released a report detailing the first year of its public health "do not board" (DNB) list, a new tool designed to prohibit those with serious communicable diseases from flying into or out of the country.

Data from the first year of the program, from June 2008 to May 2008, appear today in the Sep 19 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

(CIDRAP News) – Five years after the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic spread around the globe via air travel, significant barriers still stand in the way of tracking down and notifying airline passengers who may have been exposed to an infectious disease.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO), in a survey released yesterday, said the global number of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) cases rose to a new high and is particularly worrisome in China and in former Soviet Union countries.

(CIDRAP News) – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) this week charged that federal pandemic planning efforts rely too heavily on law enforcement and national security approaches, in effect making people, not disease, the enemy.

Editor's Note: CIDRAP's Promising Practices: Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Tools online database showcases peer-reviewed practices, including useful tools to help others with their planning. This article is one of a biweekly series exploring the development of these practices. We hope that describing the process and context of these practices enhances pandemic planning.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials recently issued an alert about a woman with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) who flew from India to the United States in mid December, and efforts are under way to locate and test several of her fellow passengers for the disease.

Editor's Note: CIDRAP's Promising Practices: Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Tools online database showcases peer-reviewed practices, including useful tools to help others with their planning. This article is one of a biweekly series exploring the development of these practices. We hope that describing the process and context of these practices enhances pandemic planning.

(CIDRAP News) – Tests have detected no tuberculosis in hundreds of people who shared airline flights with an Atlanta man who flew to Europe and back in May despite having a drug-resistant form of TB, health officials from the United States and Canada have told news services.