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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Tuberculosis: threatening Australia’s borders

An article from Life Scientist, excerpt from a long but very informative article :

" Tuberculosis (TB) is regarded by many as a disease of the past, but as a recent tuberculosis outbreak in Australian’s customs offices shows, there is a case for modernising testing for TB in developed nations, and Melbourne-based company Cellestis offers a way to do so.

The recent scare involving six Australian customs officials who appear to have contracted a latent tuberculosis infection has called into question the current protection and testing measures. The episode also highlights that while TB infection rates in Australia are relatively low – around 1000 new cases are reported per year – we remain exposed to real risks.

Additionally, a study released last year, following a review of Victorian health department data from 1998 to 2007, found there was an increase in the number of people who were diagnosed with MDR-TB, a mutant strain that is resistant to two of the most effective antibiotics used to treat TB. Even more dangerously, resistant strains of TB exist and are becoming more common around the world, and it can’t be ignored that this disease kills one person every 17 seconds worldwide.

This recent scare focuses our attention on TB in immigrants, and rightly so. In Australia, the chances of contracting TB from an Australian-born person are very low. The infection is mostly imported – because we make no effort to stop anything but the most developed cases from entering the country."

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