Nearly 150 students at Fort Wayne Community Schools are being screened for tuberculosis after one of their peers was diagnosed with an active case of TB.
The Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health was notified Dec. 21 that a high school student was infected with active TB and notified the school district, department spokesman John Silcox said.
“While this is not a routine situation,” Silcox said, “we do consider the (risk of exposure) to be low.”
The student was in an all-day program at Anthis Career Center and exposure to other students was minimal, FWCS spokeswoman Krista Stockman said.
The school and health department did not release information on the student, citing privacy laws.
Because the student was confined to one area at Anthis, the school was able to identify the other students who might have been exposed as those at Anthis and those who rode the same bus to Anthis, she said.
Those identified include students from Anthis Career Center, Wayne High School, Northrop High School and Ward Education Center, Stockman said.
“It could have been many more students (exposed) had the student been in a high school and walking in the halls, going from class to class,” Stockman said, “but that is not the case.”
TB is caused by a tiny organism known as mycobacterium tuberculosis and is highly contagious, spread from person to person through the air, according to information on the local health department’s website.
Symptoms of TB – which may settle in the lungs or other parts of the body – include weakness, weight loss, fever, night sweats, coughing (sometimes coughing up blood) and chest pain.
Skin test screenings are being administered by the health department, which is normal protocol, Stockman said.
“We are facilitating in this because we know where the students were and could easily identify them and organize the screenings,” Stockman said.
The health department will wrap up the screenings today and follow up from that point, Stockman said.
The health department will conduct a second round of testing on the same students in about eight weeks to confirm earlier test results, according to Silcox.
A person may test positive for TB or have latent TB but not have the active disease, Silcox said. Only active TB is considered contagious, he said.
Those with latent TB have the tuberculosis bacteria in their system, but it remains dormant, sometimes for many years, according to the health department’s website. During that time, the person will not have any symptoms and cannot spread the disease.
However, the TB bacteria can grow and cause active TB at any time, especially if the immune system is compromised.
Allen County had 14 active cases of TB in 2009 and 10 in 2010. Indiana had 90 cases overall in 2010. Local numbers have not been compiled for 2011, Silcox said.
