HOUSTON – This week, health experts are trying to bring awareness to “World Tuberculosis Day.”
Every year, the Houston Health Department employees deliver more than 25,000 doses of antibiotics to 150 people with TB.
That is, fortunately, a low number even though many people falsely believe TB has been eradicated.
“Our public health system has done a pretty good job of, you know, keeping tuberculosis at a low level. We’ve not been able to eradicate it, but we’ve kept it at a low level. One of the reasons we’ve been able to do that is that when we put people on to the antibiotic therapy, we go out to their house and we watch them take the medicines throughout the entire course,” explained Dr. David Persse.
They observe the patient throughout the course of medication because Dr. Persse said most patients will feel better quickly with the antibiotic, but they can’t risk the patient stopping the drugs because they may continue to spread the disease after that.
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Plus, the infection is tenacious. It runs from antibiotics and morphs into versions of the disease that make it hard to kill.
“Tuberculosis is one of those really sneaky diseases,” Persse said. “Very often you start off with a cough. Tuberculosis could infect any organ system: your eyes, your brain, your hearts. Usually, it infects your lungs, and you start coughing and it’s just a nagging cough. It’s not a particularly bad cough, but it’s a nagging cough and it doesn’t go away... the whole time you’re coughing, you’re putting those bacteria into the air where other people can breathe them and eventually, the infection in your lung will get to be so bad that you’ll start coughing up blood. That’s when people will go to their doctors and little bit worried, ‘I’m coughing up blood.’ Problem is, by that point, you’ve been spreading disease for weeks or months.”
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Like many diseases, this hurts older adults and younger kids the most.
A healthy adult may have the disease and transmit it without realizing they have it.
Doctors recommend getting an exam if you have a cough because if you’re not very symptomatic, the treatment is much quicker and easier.