Tuberculosis Outbreak Shakes Wisconsin City

Looking crisp and official in his khaki-colored sheriff’s department polo shirt, Steve Steinhardt says Sheboygan, Wis., is a pretty good place to be a director of emergency services.

“Nothing bad happens here,” he says, knocking on wood. Unless, that is, you count the tuberculosis outbreak that struck the orderly Midwestern city of 50,000 this spring and summer.

“I never expected TB to be one of the bigger emergencies I’d face when I got into this field,” Steinhardt says.

Steve Steinhardt has led Sheboygan County’s emergency response to the nine tuberculosis cases recorded since April.

Jeffrey Phelps/For NPR

Sheboygan County officials have had to scramble to contain it. At the height of the crisis, the county activated its emergency operation center — a step usually reserved for major fires, floods and tornadoes.

The county has had to borrow personnel from other jurisdictions, calm parents of schoolchildren, find housing to isolate infected families and appeal to the state for millions of dollars in extra money to deal with the situation.

It’s a reminder that TB — a disease most Americans may view as a relic of the 19th century — is still an insidious threat that can pop up anywhere.

Read the full article including quotes from CFAR Director Richard Chaisson.

Consumption’s Long Shadow: A Panel Discussion at The George Peabody Library, Wednesday June 12, 6-8 pm

Please join us for a panel discussion on TB and the literary arts at a special symposium that is part of the Stephen Crane exhibit at the Peabody Library.  The event will begin with a reception at 6 pm and the panel will speak beginning at 6:30 pm.

Speakers and Topics:

1)      Gabrielle Dean, PhD, the Sheridan Libraries:  “Delicate Victims and Literary Vigor: Stephen Crane and the Myth of Consumption.”  A brief overview of TB as a romantic disease, then a look at Stephen Crane, whose active life and “masculine” writing counters prevailing constructions.

2)      Juliette Wells, Goucher College: “The Tell-Tale Cough: Victorian Novelists and the Temptation of Metaphor.”  Realism alone doesn’t explain the proliferation of consumptive characters in nineteenth-century novels; authors were drawn as well towards the rich metaphorical possibilities offered by the symptoms and presumed etiology of tuberculosis.

3)      Richard Chaisson, MD, JHU Center for TB Research: “TB, Art and Poverty.”  A talk about how common TB was in the 1800s, including among artists, how it was romanticized (briefly), then a focus on TB in Baltimore in Crane’s time and the work of Osler at JHH, followed by a conclusion on how Baltimore led the way to reducing TB through innovative public health measures.

4)      Jeremy Greene, MD, PhD, History of Medicine, JHU: a brief history of TB treatments.

5)      Q & A, 7:35-8 pm.

CFAR Director Richard Chaisson: “TB, the quiet killer”

The Baltimore Sun
By Richard E. Chaisson
8:00 a.m. EDT, March 24, 2013

This is World Tuberculosis Day, the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch discovered the cause of tuberculosis (TB), an airborne infectious disease that continues to rage around the world, killing 1.4 million people each year. The disease remains a leading infectious disease killer globally. In Africa, TB is the biggest killer of people with HIV/AIDS.

Baltimore once had the highest rates of TB cases and deaths in the U.S., but a heroic effort by the Baltimore City Health Department’s TB clinic, led by the late Dr. David Glasser in the 1970s and 1980s, resulted in drastic reductions in our TB rates through the use of directly observed therapy (DOT) and aggressive use of treatment to prevent TB in those at highest risk.

However, TB has not been eliminated in Baltimore — or in any state. Maryland has had TB outbreaks in schools, social clubs, hospitals and among transplant patients in recent years. Los Angeles is currently battling a TB epidemic among a homeless population in which more than 4,600 people have potentially been exposed and 11 have died.

Read the entire article here.