LOXAHATCHEE — A second Palm Beach County school is in the midst of a tuberculosis investigation, health officials acknowledged Tuesday, as they finished TB skin testing of some 200 students and faculty at Seminole Ridge High School in Loxahatchee.
The second case, based at Orchard View Elementary School in Delray Beach, involved fewer contacts and a different strain of TB, said Palm Beach County Health Department Spokesman Tim O'Connor.
Letters went out to the elementary school student's classmates and teachers on May 18, and skin tests were conducted immediately after, O'Connor said. In all, 96 people at Orchard View received the skin test.
"In elementary school, they don't change classes, so they tested the immediate classroom contacts," O'Connor said. "They also tested those on the school bus and in extracurricular activities."
It's not terribly unusual to have two schools facing TB inquiries at the same time, O'Connor said. Palm Beach County sees about 60 tuberculosis cases per year. Last year, John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach had a student who was sick with the lung infection.
In every case, health workers try to identify close contacts and make sure they're tested for exposure.
What's unusual about the Seminole Ridge case, is the strain of TB that health officials are fighting.
It's multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, which means at least two of the favored drugs used to treat the disease, isoniazid and rifampicin, aren't effective. None of last year's 60 cases was drug resistant.
That has serious implications for how health officials will fight any spread of the disease at Seminole Ridge.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/tuberculosis-hits-a-second-school-delray-elementary-has-735078.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment