Local Hospitals Deal With Tuberculosis Scare

BOSTON -- Health officials are on alert after a tuberculosis case was confirmed in the state. A surgical intern who's worked at four local hospitals has the disease and hundreds of people may have been exposed.

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Gail Huff Reports On TB Scare

Newscenter 5's Gail Huff reported from the Veterans Affairs hospital in West Roxbury that health officials are trying to get in touch with all of the patients who have had surgery recently, e-mailing them, calling them and sending them letters, urging them to come into the VA Hospital as soon as possible for free testing.

"Right now the VA has determined that there are about 714 patients that have been exposed, so they're in the process of being contacted," U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch told NewsCenter 5.

Those patients were exposed to tuberculosis, officials said, by a female surgical intern who works at the hospital and has been diagnosed with the disease, which is highly contagious. TB is spread by coughing or sneezing. Now, all the patients she treated and 200 of her co-workers must be tested.

"They're assuming that basically all the docs and all the staff and all the nurses at the facility were exposed, so they're testing them all," Lynch said.

The same female intern, who is now on leave and undergoing treatment, worked at three other Massachusetts hospitals, including Cape Cod Hospital last January, Boston Medical Center and Brockton Hospital six months ago. Those hospitals are in the process of assessing who should be tested at those facilities.

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To check for TB, a skin test is administered and it takes two or three days to make sure there are no false readings. TB symptoms include cough, chest pains, fever, night sweats, weight loss and feeling tired.

Tuberculosis can be fatal, but if it is caught in time it can be effectively treated. It calls for a regimen of six to nine months of antibiotics.