One Active, One Suspected Case of TB Found in County
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Jordan Fouts-
One active case of tuberculosis is being treated in the county and another suspected case is awaiting confirmation, the Kosciusko County Board of Health heard Wednesday. Bill Remington, county health officer, told the board treatment of the active case is expected to be completed in the coming months and the possible active case is waiting for the results of a culture test. He said there is no suspected epidemiological link between the two incidents or between them and the 2005 outbreak in the northern part of the county, in the determination of Teresa Reed, case manager of the county Communicable Disease Program. The 2005 outbreak in the Syracuse and North Webster area saw 10 positive cases of TB and a visit from medical teams with the Center for Disease Control. The average number of TB cases in the county is one or fewer per year, Reed said this morning. She declined to say where the current active case is located or when it was confirmed, only saying that the patient is isolated at home during treatment. She added that about 20 suspects are investigated for each confirmed case. Remington said Wednesday that case contacts at the same employer as the confirmed case received on-site treatment as a precaution. “When we have an active case, we anticipate six to seven latent cases around them,” he told the board. “If we don’t treat them within two years, 10 percent of them will be more active, each with six to seven latent cases around them. It’s a slowly exploding circle. We’ve got to find the latent cases around the active ones, that’s the lesson we learned in 2005.” Also during the meeting, the board determined to find a project to do with the Northern Indiana Hispanic Health Coalition after hearing from coalition director Liliana Quintero. Quintero, who came to the area from Colombia in order to study, outlined programs the coalition conducts for Hispanic residents in Kosciusko, Elkhart, St. Joseph and Noble counties. She said the coalition, founded in 2002 and with offices in Elkhart and Warsaw, has helped more than 11,000 people since 2005 and performed more than $2.5 million worth of services including health fairs, screenings, education and referrals. With two-thirds of those the coalition helps coming from Spanish language-only homes, Quintero noted language can be as much a barrier to health care access and education as income. The coalition does what it can with 300 volunteers and a variety of partner businesses and organizations, she said. She also told the board she would like to see Warsaw become more multicultural-oriented. “All of us (in the coalition) have the same mission, to make this a better place, a healthier place. We don’t have a lot of money, we don’t have a lot of resources, but we have a big heart,” she said. “I would like to make Warsaw more inclusive because in the end, we are all immigrants in one way or another.”
