It is up to hospitals to keep their patients from being exposed to dangerous diseases. This is why the hospitals are constantly sterilized, and people with any kind of sickness are not allowed to enter into the wings with sick patients. Yet two hospitals in Sacramento and Solano County, recently allowed a visitor with tuberculosis to go into the neonatal intensive care unit, putting about 25 babies at risk to the deadly sickness.
The diseased visitor came to the Sacramento Sutter's Memorial Hospital in the latter half of the month of March. At that hospital, 11 babies are at risk to the disease. The same person visited another neonatal ICU in NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield in the beginning of April, where 14 babies have been labeled at risk. The families have been contacted for further tests. According to ABC some of the babies have already undergone testing but the results will remain confidential for the time being.
The chief medical officer at the Solano County Public Health Department says that they will do everything in their power to determine whether or not the babies caught the sickness. If they test positive, then the infants will be issued antibiotics to fight the illness. Tuberculosis, or TB, is a dangerous bacterial infection that spreads through the lymph nodes and blood stream. It can manifest itself in any organ in the body, but most often resides in the lungs. The bacteria can reside in an inactive form. When inactive, the disease has no symptoms. Yet when an immune system weakens, the tuberculosis may activate and cause the tissues of an organ to deteriorate. When the disease goes untreated, it can be fatal.
People with HIV or elderly people with weaker immune systems are at serious risk to death by tuberculosis. If they have the inactive version, it is likely that it will flare up and become a dangerous disease. Babies are also susceptible to gaining an active version of the sickness. The bacterium that causes this disease is transmitted through the air, so carriers become highly contagious. If you are in close proximity to someone with TB, especially on a day-to-day basis, then you are at high-risk to catch the illness. The disease is only contagious when it is active. Medication can help to get rid of inactive versions of TB.
The director of the children's tuberculosis clinic at a Texas Children's Hospital says that it is very unlikely that the babies caught the illness. The visitor with tuberculosis was not touching the children, and many of the infants use breathing tubes. This gives them an extra layer of protection. The neonatal ICU is always very clean and nurses try to keep it free of any bacteria that could hurt the fragile wards. Public health officials have chosen to test the hospital administrators and staff who were present when the visitor came in before they test all of the babies that may have been affected. This is because it is often easier to test adults for the disease than infants.
If the hospital staff has the sickness, then they will start in on testing all of the babies. They can usually determine whether or not people have TB simply by taking a blood test. Both hospitals are currently compiling a list of people who were present when the visitor entered the floor. According to ABC, the carrier of the TB has been identified, isolated, and is undergoing treatment. The person promises that he or she did not know that he or she was carrying active tuberculosis at the time.
Thankfully, when a child has TB it is normally easy to treat. While the babies were more than likely exposed, there is not a guarantee that they will catch the illness. In this case, the hospital staff was not aware that they were exposing the infants to a dangerous illness. Yet if the staff or doctors allow a person with a sickness to enter an ICU, and they infect the patients therein, it can become a serious issue worthy of a medical malpractice lawsuit.