Indiana combats tuberculosis

BLOOMINGTON -- State health officials are making progress combatting tuberculosis in Indiana through a program that provides free antibiotics to TB patients and closely monitors them.\nImproved monitoring is the main reason Indiana's TB cases fell from 248 in 1993 to 128 last year, said Paul Britton, manager of the Indiana State Department of Health's TB Control Program.\nThe agency -- through the state-funded TB Drug Program -- provides free TB antibiotics to local health departments, who then distribute it to TB patients at no charge.\nBritton said people with active TB must take a course of antibiotics lasting six to nine months to successfully treat the disease.\n"People left on their own often don't take the full course of antibiotics," he said. "But in recent years, we've done a better job of directly supervising people with the active disease."\nUsing a Center for Disease Control and Prevention grant, the state health department also provides free lab testing to determine active TB cases.\nTuberculosis, an infectious bacterial illness, strikes about 16,000 people a year in the United States, about 1,000 of whom die.\nLast year, the 128 TB cases in Indiana resulted in 15 deaths.\nBritton said private doctors must report TB cases to local health departments, who are then legally responsible to make sure people with TB are treated and managed appropriately.\nBarbara Weber, TB regional nurse, said employees with Bloomington Hospital's Community Health Services directly observe TB patients taking antibiotics to make sure they take their full course of medicine.\nThe Monroe County Health Department subcontracts Community Health Services to distribute medicine to and monitor patients with active TB.\n"We're flexible, depending on what works best for the patient," Weber said. "The person either comes to us or we go to the person's home."\nMillions of people around the world are infected with the TB bacteria, but the infection remains latent or "inactive" in their systems and they never develop the disease.\nOnly a small percentage of infected people develop active TB.\nBritton said TB will continue to be a problem in Indiana and the United States as long as the disease continues to claim about 2 million lives a year worldwide.\n"As long as we see foreign-born people visiting or moving to Indiana, we will continue to see cases of TB here," he said. "37 percent of the 128 people who contracted TB in Indiana last year were foreign-born."\nTB spreads through the air from one person to another when someone with TB in the lungs or throat coughs or sneezes. If people nearby breathe the bacteria, they can become infected.\nBritton said TB is difficult to transmit on aircraft because its ventilation systems circulate fresh air.