United States: High school officials at Woodbridge Township disclosed that one of their students carries tuberculosis through messaging to their education community.
School principal Christopher Chieral wrote a letter on March 14 declaring that a single student was receiving treatment while recovering well from tuberculosis.
Both school administration and the Middlesex County Office of Health Services work together to detect potential individuals exposed by this student. The letter specified that all people considered “close contacts” must undergo a disease screening process.
About the disease
Proper treatment becomes critical for survival from the bacterial illness of tuberculosis. The county health services refused to provide any statement at that time, gothamist.com reported.
A positive tuberculosis case occurs at a time when the United States and New Jersey have been facing growing tuberculosis diagnoses since 2020.
Most states showed rising tuberculosis case counts during 2023 based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Shocking stats revealed by the CDC
CDC reports show that New Jersey experienced an 18.7% rise in tuberculosis diagnoses, which brought the total cases from 289 to 343 in 2023.
New Jersey maintains a tuberculosis case rate of 3.7 per 100,000 people, which exceeds the national average for 2023.
According to CDC data, 8.3 tuberculosis cases per 100,000 persons appeared in New York City at this time, gothamist.com reported.
The figures indicate that New York, outside of the city, had 1.9 tubercular cases for every 100,000 people during that time frame.
The primary site of tuberculosis infection is the lungs, although the bacterium causes damage across various body organs, which include kidneys, liver, heart, bones, joints, and blood vessels.
An individual can contract TB after an infected patient coughs sneezes, or spits through airborne transmission.