{"id":3752,"date":"2023-06-06T14:57:16","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T19:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=3752"},"modified":"2023-06-06T14:57:20","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T19:57:20","slug":"lessons-from-the-tuberculosis-patient-on-the-lam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/06\/06\/lessons-from-the-tuberculosis-patient-on-the-lam\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons From the Tuberculosis Patient on the Lam"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/opinion\/parasites-and-plagues\/104849?xid=nl_secondopinion_2023-06-06&amp;eun=g1462072d0r\">MedPage Today<\/a> We can learn from the case now that she&#8217;s receiving treatment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the last few months, a woman from Tacoma, Washington has been widely featured in\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.king5.com\/article\/news\/local\/tacoma\/tacoma-woman-tuberculosis-found-contempt-court-orders\/281-de676b4d-e710-4d38-98a0-7700d5843489\" target=\"_blank\">local<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/woman-with-tuberculosis-faces-jail-and-forced-treatment-after-refusing-medication-isolation\" target=\"_blank\">national media<\/a> including the\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/05\/23\/us\/washington-tuberculosis-woman.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, for refusing to take medication for active tuberculosis (TB).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In February 2023, a judge issued a civil warrant for her arrest. In early March, after the woman failed to attend yet another hearing, a new warrant was issued to involuntarily detain her for testing and treatment in jail. Surveillance then revealed the fugitive boarding a public bus and entering a local casino. She remained at large until recently, but the saga finally ended late last week when she was\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/wpde.com\/news\/nation-world\/washington-state-woman-with-tuberculosis-finally-arrested-to-receive-treatment-in-jail\" target=\"_blank\">arrested<\/a> and sent to jail where she will receive treatment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In medicine, we&#8217;re all sensitive to confidentiality. Nonetheless, I can&#8217;t help wishing that someone had dug a little deeper while covering this story to help us understand her condition and why she was refusing treatment. There are a few obvious questions: Had the patient already infected others? Did she have drug-resistant TB? Had she previously suffered medication side effects? Last, but not least &#8212; given TB&#8217;s age-old stigma &#8212; did she even understand or believe her diagnosis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The truth is, in 21st century America where this once-widespread plague is now often &#8220;out of sight, out of mind,&#8221; many doctors lack TB knowledge. On top of this, unique skills are sometimes needed to overcome the obstacles hindering prompt, effective treatment of the world&#8217;s leading infectious killer.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MedPage Today We can learn from the case now that she&#8217;s receiving treatment. Over the last few months, a woman from Tacoma, Washington has been widely featured in\u00a0local\u00a0and\u00a0national media including the\u00a0New York Times, for refusing to take medication for active tuberculosis (TB). In February 2023, a judge issued a civil warrant for her arrest. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-tb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screenshot-2023-06-06-at-15.56.37.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3754,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752\/revisions\/3754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}