Tuberculosis

Born: Seoul in 1959 and moved to Muscatine, Iowa, when he was 5, where he was valedictorian and class president. Education: BA from Brown University; MD from Harvard Medical School; and PhD from Harvard's Department of Anthropology. Career highlights: Dartmouth College president (first Asian-American to lead an Ivy League school). Director of the HIV/AIDS department at World Health Organization. Cofounder of Partners in Health, which supports programs in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, and the United States.

A California judge has refused to release a tuberculosis patient who was jailed and charged after allegedly refusing to take medication to keep his disease from becoming contagious. San Joaquin County Judge Brett Morgan on Wednesday denied 34-year-old Armando Rodriguez's request for release. The Record of Stockton reports (http://bit.ly/JMlaMy) the judge said he was uncomfortable releasing Rodriguez because of his methamphetamine and alcohol use and past behavior. Health officials say Rodriguez failed to take the medication on his own, once telling a nurse he had gone on...

MAPUTO, Mozambique -- The World Health Organization declared tuberculosis an African emergency yesterday, a move meant to intensify the fight against a disease that kills more than a half-million people a year. The annual number of new tuberculosis cases in Africa has quadrupled since 1990 and continues to rise, fueled by a lethal mix of poverty, HIV/AIDS, and understaffed, crumbling health systems. Tuberculosis is the most common infection among -- and leading killer of -- people living with HIV/AIDS.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jim Yong Kim, an American who is president of Dartmouth College, has been chosen to be the next president of the World Bank. His selection Monday extends the U.S. hold on the top job at the 187-nation development agency. Kim, a surprise nominee of President Barack Obama, was selected Monday in a vote by the World Bank's 25-member executive board. He'll succeed Robert Zoellick, who's stepping down after a five year term. Developing nations waged an unsuccessful challenge to Kim, 52, a physician and pioneer in treating HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in the...

The following was submitted by Cambridge Health Alliance: On Tuesday, March 27th, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), a Harvard-affiliated healthcare system that serves Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston's metro-north communities, received an Institutional Partner Award from the Medical Advisory Committee for the Elimination of Tuberculosis (MACET). CHA was one of two institutions selected statewide to be honored. State Representative Alice Wolf and State Senator Sal DiDomenico presented the award at a World No TB Day 2012 ceremony and legislative...

A California judge has refused to release a tuberculosis patient who was jailed and charged after allegedly refusing to take medication to keep his disease from becoming contagious. San Joaquin County Judge Brett Morgan on Wednesday denied 34-year-old Armando Rodriguez's request for release. The Record of Stockton reports (http://bit.ly/JMlaMy) the judge said he was uncomfortable releasing Rodriguez because of his methamphetamine and alcohol use and past behavior. Health officials say Rodriguez failed to take the medication on his own, once...

MONTPELIER -- Passengers on a bus from Boston to Montreal in early May might have been exposed to tuberculosis but it's unlikely they were infected, Massachusetts health officials said yesterday. The passengers were being notified that another passenger on the bus had the disease. Dr. Al DeMaria, director of communicable disease control for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said these types of notifications of passengers happen "all the time. " "We almost never find anyone with infection as a result," he said.

ATLANTA -- A widely traveled Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the United States by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said yesterday. The inspector has been removed from border duty. The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was "discretionary," officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press.

PHILADELPHIA -- Albert Schatz, a soil microbiologist who helped discover the first effective antibiotic treatment for tuberculosis, died Jan. 17 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 84 and had pancreatic cancer, his wife, Vivian, said. Mr. Schatz was a 23-year-old Rutgers University graduate student, recently discharged from the Army, when he began experiments that led to the development of streptomycin, an antibiotic capable of fighting a number of diseases that penicillin couldn't cure, including tuberculosis, typhoid, tularemia, and...

NORFOLK, Va. -- Tuberculosis testing will begin Monday for hundreds of people who may have been exposed to the disease by a hospital nurse who died of TB a week ago. A federal health official called it shameful that anyone should die of TB, a curable disease. In the United States, fewer than 1,000 people die of tuberculosis each year. Yet, the nurse at Chesapeake General Hospital remained undiagnosed and untreated "until it was in a very late stage," said Dr. Nancy Welch, health director in Chesapeake, a community near Norfolk.

The following was submitted by Cambridge Health Alliance: On Tuesday, March 27th, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), a Harvard-affiliated healthcare system that serves Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston's metro-north communities, received an Institutional Partner Award from the Medical Advisory Committee for the Elimination of Tuberculosis (MACET). CHA was one of two institutions selected statewide to be honored. State Representative Alice Wolf and State Senator Sal DiDomenico presented the award at a World No TB Day 2012 ceremony and legislative...

Born: Seoul in 1959 and moved to Muscatine, Iowa, when he was 5, where he was valedictorian and class president. Education: BA from Brown University; MD from Harvard Medical School; and PhD from Harvard's Department of Anthropology. Career highlights: Dartmouth College president (first Asian-American to lead an Ivy League school). Director of the HIV/AIDS department at World Health Organization. Cofounder of Partners in Health, which supports programs in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, and the United States.

ATLANTA — Lawyers for an Atlanta man who was thrust into the center of a 2007 international tuberculosis scare said yesterday that federal health officials publicized his condition to make an example out of him in an effort to win more funding to fight the disease. Andrew Speaker’s lawyers told the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed his private medical condition at a press conferences beginning in May 2007 to dramatize the possibility that diseases like TB can be transmitted worldwide.

MILWAUKEE — Scientists are reporting a major advance in diagnosing tuberculosis: A new test can reveal in less than two hours, with very high accuracy, whether someone has the disease and whether it is resistant to the main drug for treating it. The test could revolutionize TB care and replace the 125-year-old process used now, which is slow and misses more than half of all cases, scientists say. A better test would be a powerful tool...

NEW YORK - Advocates of international adoption are furious over a new federal policy related to tuberculosis testing that could disrupt plans for families adopting children from China and Ethiopia. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a directive intended to minimize the number of immigrants entering the United States with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Earlier this year, the CDC announced that immigrants over the age of 2 from Ethiopia and China - a country that for the past decade has been the leading source of foreign adoptions for American parents...

MONTPELIER -- Passengers on a bus from Boston to Montreal in early May might have been exposed to tuberculosis but it's unlikely they were infected, Massachusetts health officials said yesterday. The passengers were being notified that another passenger on the bus had the disease. Dr. Al DeMaria, director of communicable disease control for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said these types of notifications of passengers happen "all the time. " "We almost never find anyone with infection as a result," he said.

ATLANTA — Lawyers for an Atlanta man who was thrust into the center of a 2007 international tuberculosis scare said yesterday that federal health officials publicized his condition to make an example out of him in an effort to win more funding to fight the disease. Andrew Speaker’s lawyers told the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed his private medical condition at a press conferences beginning in May 2007 to dramatize the possibility that diseases like TB can be transmitted worldwide.

MILWAUKEE — Scientists are reporting a major advance in diagnosing tuberculosis: A new test can reveal in less than two hours, with very high accuracy, whether someone has the disease and whether it is resistant to the main drug for treating it. The test could revolutionize TB care and replace the 125-year-old process used now, which is slow and misses more than half of all cases, scientists say. A better test would be a powerful tool...

ATLANTA -- A widely traveled Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the United States by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said yesterday. The inspector has been removed from border duty. The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was "discretionary," officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press.

MAPUTO, Mozambique -- The World Health Organization declared tuberculosis an African emergency yesterday, a move meant to intensify the fight against a disease that kills more than a half-million people a year. The annual number of new tuberculosis cases in Africa has quadrupled since 1990 and continues to rise, fueled by a lethal mix of poverty, HIV/AIDS, and understaffed, crumbling health systems. Tuberculosis is the most common infection among -- and leading killer of -- people living with HIV/AIDS.