Until I joined the Peace Corps I had no idea that there was such a holiday, but I want to wish you a very merry belated World Tuberculosis Day. (It was yesterday, Saturday March 23.) In Rinconada we had a march on Friday to celebreate. The kids from my health classes, 5th and 6th graders made posters and walked around the town behind the ambulance. There were chants about how if you have a cough for more than 15 days you should go to the doctor and others explaining that TB is treatable. It was really fun and I think in total there were about 10 people from the Health Post and more than 70 kids. Then all the neighbors that came out to walk around with us and see what all the fuss was about. Fun times.
Interestingly, just before coming to Peace Corps I did a brief stint at the New York City Health Department in a small unit that does research about the health needs of inmates in City jails. When I started there I didn't know that anyone in the US had tuberculosis, but I was really surprised to find out that many inmates at Rikers Island test positive for TB (That's that shot where you have to go back two days later to see if you have a bump on your arm.) and then those inmates get chest x-rays to see if they have active TB. I'm not sure how many people we're talking about but, it seems that there are a number of inmates who suffer from TB in New York City jails. When the health provider at the jail finds someone with active TB that inmate has to be quarantined. I didn't hear of any specific cases of quarantine in the few months that I was there but, I understand that such cases have occurred. There's a guy in my old unit whose job it is to track the health records to make sure the Health Dept. knows if and how many inmates have TB.
In Peru TB is more common, especially in certain geographic pockets like the red light district in Lima. Happily, in the last 3 years there have been no cases of TB where I live in Rinconada Llicuar, although they did find a woman last year who had tuberculosis in a mass in her breast tissue, a pretty unusual ailment. The doctor tells me that she probably had untreated tuberculosis as a young person and it traveled to her breast. Fortunately, because the bacteria is in her breast tissue rather than in the lung it is not contagious. (TB is spread though the saliva by coughing.)
Here's a cool event that I found on the WHO website for the New Yorkers:
¨In New York, for the first time, a special TB exhibition will be held in the UN headquarters, with photographs by the award-winning journalist James Nachtwey. The free exhibition, from 22 March to 25 April, is designed to raise awareness around the challenges to addressing an epidemic that kills 1.6 million people a year. A total of 33 photographs, taken from a variety of worldwide locations, will also be supported by a special DVD featuring the photographs with accompanying music performed by the musician Yo Yo Ma.¨
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