First case of highly drug-resistant TB found in US (1)
It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away.
Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame ofOswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. Hislungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp.During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from histhroat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood.
I’m dying, he told himself, “because when you cough blood, it’s something really bad.”
It was really bad, and not just for him.
Doctors say Juarez’s incessant hack was a sign of what they haveboth dreaded and expected for years — this country’s first case of acontagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis.The Associated Press learned of his case, which until now has not beenmade public, as part of a six-month look at the soaring globalchallenge of drug resistance.
Juarez’s strain — so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB — hasnever before been seen in the U.S., according to Dr. David Ashkin, oneof the nation’s leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis isso rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought tohave had it.
“He is really the future,” Ashkin said. “This is the new class thatpeople are not really talking too much about. These are the ones wereally fear because I’m not sure how we treat them.”
Forty years ago, the world thought it had conquered TB and anynumber of other diseases through the new wonder drugs: Antibiotics.U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart announced it was “time to closethe book on infectious diseases and declare the war against pestilencewon.”
Today, all the leading killer infectious diseases on the planet —TB, malaria and HIV among them — are mutating at an alarming rate,hitchhiking their way in and out of countries. The reason: Overuse andmisuse of the very drugs that were supposed to save us.
(1)This incident is precisely why the INS should re-institute an AngelIsland situation where inbound immigrants are held in some sort ofinternment to screen for health problems coming into our country. Mostof the sick people come from the tropics where these viruses incubatein the warm moist climates. This was done in the 1800s and in the1900s. I don’t think the legal aliens are held in any kind of holdingsituation anymore.
We should at least check the legal aliens since wedon’t give a damn about the mass Mexican border stampede.