The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH officials do not believe there are any active cases of tuberculosis at R M Bailey Senior High School despite 28 students and eight teachers testing positive for the disease, according to Health Minister Dr Duane Sands yesterday.

He said while none of the individuals are displaying symptoms, x-rays will have to be completed to determine if there is any sign of active TB.

Dr Sands further revealed there are four active cases of TB in Eleuthera found out of 380 people on the island who had positive Mantoux tests. Dr Sands said that in total 2,500 were screened.

The Mantoux is a skin test that can tell if a person has had exposure to TB.

And despite concerns there might have been a case of tuberculosis at the C H Reeves Junior High School, Dr Sands said none of the screenings done there returned a positive result.

He said: “(At) RM Bailey we have just about completed the screening of the students. We’ve done about 700, 800 students and all of the teachers and staff. Eight of the teachers have been shown to have positive Mantoux or skin tests and 28 of the students have positive Mantoux.

“We will now have to do x-rays on the students to determine if there is any sign of active tuberculosis. At this point nobody is symptomatic and so we do not believe that there are any active cases of TB other than the original case that prompted the concern.”

In Eleuthera, Dr Sands said the majority of the cases on the island are latent.

He said: “Thus far we have screened almost 2,500 people in Eleuthera of that number we now have 380 positive. When I say positive I’m talking about Mantoux or TB skin tests positive so these would be patients with latent tuberculosis not active TB. There were a number of suspicious chest x-rays and we have now identified four patients with active tuberculosis.

“Now if you do the numbers say 2,400 or thereabouts, screened a total of 380 positive skin tests and four out of that entire number with active TB so the overall prevalence of active TB is less than a half of one per cent.

“When we look at the results in Eleuthera and we see that less than 0.5 per cent have active TB probably along the order of 0.2 per cent. It means that again that’s not bad but we want to do better.

“So we are now completing evaluation of all of the different communities so that our comments are statistically relevant and valid so we are starting to see some patterns that gives us an idea of which communities have a higher incident or prevalence of positive skin tests and so as we attempt to get the complete population screened we would at least know that our activity is being driven by evidence.”

Dr Sands said officials will head to Exuma to begin screenings there once work is complete in Eleuthera.

TB is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. It is an infectious disease that generally affects the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections do not have symptoms. If left untreated when it becomes active, the disease kills about half of those infected, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Anyone with questions on TB is asked to call the Ministry of Health’s Surveillance Unit at 376-1103, 376-3970 or 502-4705.