Florida: Worst TB Outbreak in 20 Years Kept Secret - Cryptogon.com
Via: Palm Beach Post:
The CDC officer had a serious warning for Florida health
officials in April: A tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was one of
the worst his group had investigated in 20 years. Linked to 13 deaths
and 99 illnesses, including six children, it would require concerted
action to stop.
That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after
Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of
Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in
Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than
60 years.
As health officials in Tallahassee turned their focus to
restructuring, Dr. Robert Luo’s 25-page report describing Jacksonville’s
outbreak — and the measures needed to contain it – went unseen by key
decision makers around the state. At the health agency, an order went
out that the TB hospital must be closed six months ahead of schedule.
Had they seen the letter, decision makers would have learned that
3,000 people in the past two years may have had close contact with
contagious people at Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, an outpatient
mental health clinic and area jails. Yet only 253 people had been found
and evaluated for TB infection, meaning Florida’s outbreak was, and is,
far from contained.
The public was not to learn anything until early June, even
though the same strain was appearing in other parts of the state,
including Miami.
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