After a great showing on Wednesday, March 11, at the University of New Hampshire, we screened the film on March 12 at the TB Awareness Day sponsored by the Nobel Prize-winning University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass. Pictured here is Dr. Christopher Sassetti, professor of molecular genetics and microbiology. Dr. Jennifer Furin, Harvard epidemiologist and a member of Paul Farmer's Partners in Health also spoke.
THIS WEEK -- FIRST PBS BROADCAST! On our sponsor station, WSBE, TV-36, which serves the southern New England market. Many more broadcasts to follow around the country, check back here as the schedule develops.
Next university showing: New York University School of Medicine/Bellevue Hospital.
If you would like to schedule a TB Awareness Day, send us an email.
1 comment:
I was very happy to see the article in our local newspaper about your documentary. I wasn't able to attend the showing at the University of New Hampshire, but I'm looking forward to seeing it on our local PBS station.
I was not surprised to learn that TB is the world's second most deadly infectious disease, but I was surprised to learn, first hand, that our medical experts are so slow to recognize TB infection. More steps need to be taken to protect the people closest to suspected infections while awaiting the results of AFB cultures.
The end of a newspaper article accompanying the one about your documentary quotes Dr. Elizabeth Talbot of the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center here in New Hampshire. Dr. Talbot described continuing work to develop better screening, more effective drug treatments, etc., in hopes of preventing the threat of multi-drug resistant TB from becoming a widespread problem here, and went on to say "This is a very active area of research right now.".
I feel it's unfortunate that with all this active research taking place that today's doctors are not more familiar with the symptoms and characteristics of TB. All those people who were isolated in sanatoriums up until the 1960's more than likely exposed at least one other person to the bacteria, and because TB bacteria can lie dormant for decades we may see an increase in the number of latent TB infections convert to active in our elderly population - and our doctors won't recognize what their patient has. This can contribute to multi-drug resistant TB when symptoms are misdiagnosed and treated inappropriately.
My husband's mother was a nurse in the late 1930's/early 40's and contracted TB. She was put in a sanatorium on my husband's first birthday. She died within a year or two.
My husband is now in his mid-sixties, and because he was exposed to TB as a baby he would always test positive for TB using the skin test. He has never shown symptoms of pulmonary TB, but over a year ago began having problems with urinary blockage and bleeding. Countless trips to the emergency room, a urologist and his primary care physician between Dec. 2007 and July 2008 did not not produce any suspicion on the part of any of the doctors in NH that he was suffering from TB. While I made sure his doctors were aware of his familial history of TB, none of them suspected that was the cause of his medical issues until he saw a urologist in Boston. Even then, the infectious disease *specialist* here in NH my husband was finally able to get an appointment with was not willing to believe the Boston doctor's opinion until the cultures came back positive. Meanwhile my husband ran fevers of over 104, lost 40 lbs, and was extremely sick.
Even with all the research that has been done, and continues to be done, the AFB culture is still the 'gold standard' to determine that the patient is suffering from TB - these cultures take 6-8 weeks, and sometimes longer to produce a result.
There should be a standard screening recommendation (just as there are for mammograms and colonoscopy's), that sputum and urine cultures be done on a regular basis.
My husband has renal TB, and was extremely fortunate that it is unilateral - so he has lost only one kidney. Our experiences with the Public Health department has been enlightening, and does not give us confidence that the public health is being protected against this and other infectious disease.
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