The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) alerted Mission Bay High School (MBHS) officials and parents that a student was recently diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) and may have exposed students and staff to the disease between Feb. 4 and March 13.
According to an HHSA announcement, approximately 200 students, teachers and staff may have been exposed during that time.
“We’re going to be working with the school to provide testing on campus sometime in the next week or so in case students can’t get to their own doctor,” said Dr. Kathy Moser, Director of the TB program with the County Public Heath Services.
“Who knows when that person got infected, but for whatever reason, the TB came out of its dormancy, so the person had an active disease and got sick. So now we have the opportunity with the other people to find them when they just have the early infection so they don’t get sick,” she said.
The test for the disease involves injecting a protein under the skin and gauging the reaction. If the person has a large skin reaction, the person would need a chest X-ray to see if the disease has become active. Moser said treatment would require antibiotics and the disease is curable.
“Last year we had 280 newly diagnosed cases in the county,” Moser said. “It’s been running in the 280 to 300 range for many years. As far as infection, those people who may or may not know they breathed in the infection at some point, the national number is about 5 to 10 percent of the U.S. population has the dormant infection, many of whom have no idea. But 30 percent of the world’s population has that infection, which is why TB is such a big deal in other countries.”
Moser said the student was at a lower end of infectiousness and expects the student to be back in class within a week or two.
“The school sent letters to parents and did our best to let everyone know. It’s back to normal at the school,” said Jack Brandais, media spokesman with the San Diego Unified School District.