The Jefferson County Department of Health has initial tuberculosis test results on Homewood High School students and personnel evaluated last week for exposure after a ninth-grader was diagnosed with the respiratory disease.
But officials won’t say if anyone has tested positive so far, and stress that tuberculosis is a slow-developing disease that typically takes 10 to 12 weeks for symptoms to show up.
On March 25, Homewood Schools Superintendent Bill Cleveland told concerned parents about 960 of the 1,060 students at Homewood High School and 169 employees were tested for tuberculosis.
In a statement released March 30, Dr. Ed Khan, medical director of disease control at the Jefferson County Department of Public Health, said tuberculosis investigation is a multi-step process and “only when this has been completed for all potentially exposed individuals will we know 1) if anyone has been infected with the TB bacteria, and 2) if anyone else is actually ill with the disease.”
Khan said the county health department appreciates the cooperation and assistance of the Homewood School system in the investigation “and their working diligently to provide accurate information to parents in a timely manner.”
Last week, Khan and Cleveland spent an hour answering questions from about 50 concerned parents about tuberculosis, wondering how the freshman caught the potentially deadly, contagious respiratory disease. Khan assured the parents it is safe to keep their kids in Homewood High while his department treats the patient and tests students and employees to assure they aren't infected.
The Jefferson County Department of Health website, jcdh.org, has a link to with information under the tab “Tuberculosis (TB) Facts You Need to Know.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, tuberculosis is one of the world's most deadly diseases. In 2010, 8.8 million people fell ill with tuberculosis. Of the 1.4 million deaths, 95 percent occurred in developing countries.
Khan said officials still don't know how the Homewood High student, whose name isn't being released, caught tuberculosis. He said the patient is being treated, and that county public health officials are researching people he might have been in contact with.
Thanks to advancements in treatment, tuberculosis cases are rare, but they do sometimes appear such as currently with the Homewood student, Khan said.
"The only way TB is transmitted is if someone has active TB in their lungs and then they cough, talk, sneeze, whatever, it gets in the air and then others within the vicinity of that person breathes in that air and then it gets in their lungs," Khan said. "This was recognized very early on."
Khan said the student is on a preventive medication. County health officials don't know yet where or how the student caught tuberculosis.
"Both the infected person and the person who gave them TB probably didn't know it was there," he said. "The majority of people do not know they have it. Sometimes you can learn risk factors based on where that person had been."
Khan acknowledged that some of the Homewood High student test results may come back as positive, but added they are OK as long as they don't have what he called "active disease."
"If there is active disease, we will observe to make sure person gets active treatment," Khan said. "If it is dormant, then we will give them medicine every month. That falls on parents to make sure their children get treatment."
Since tuberculosis is a federal priority, the department of health covers treatment costs, Khan said.
As part of their investigation, health officials will test the victim's family, and will alert people who might have been in contact with him, including church or any organizations or sporting teams the patient might have participated in.
Cleveland said school officials felt a sense of urgency to get the message out to parents. "Due to the calendar, with spring break coming upon us, there was a big sense to get this ball rolling despite the slow moving thing that tuberculosis is,” the superintendent said last week. “I've heard lots of things as far as siblings of the student, should we be concerned. To our knowledge, there are no siblings of the student in our school system."
Khan said if parents have students at Homewood High, they should be alert for active coughing, abnormal chest X-ray or dramatic weight loss and other symptoms. He said one-third of world population has the tuberculosis germ in their body but don't get sick from it.
"That state cannot transfer the disease," he said. "There is no active transmitting of the disease. There is no active replication of the disease in the body. It's just dormant and contained by the immune system in the body. That can't infect anybody else. it's only the one coughing, sick, losing weight. At the end of this, we are going to know who is latent, no symptoms, who is active."
One parent said her daughter is asking her what tuberculosis is. Cleveland said he is going to "to make this a teachable" moment. Our main focus has been on communicating to parents," he said, adding that he plans to invite the Jefferson County Department of Health to educate students and parents about the disease.
