TB Testing Ended

Details

Health News

Monday, 21 January 2013 02:30

By caribarena news

Antigua St. John's - The testing and management process of persons exposed to a former Clarevue Psychiatric Hospital patient suspected to have passed away as a result of tuberculosis has reportedly come to an end with about 20 percent of these persons being tested.

Well-placed sources at the hospital told Caribarena on Sunday that more than half of those tested have been found positive for TB exposure.

With the suspension of testing on hospital grounds, some Clarevue employees have reportedly unsuccessfully requested assistance from the hospital to seek testing and treatment elsewhere.

Acting Medical Superintendent Dr Terri-Ann Joseph is reported to have denied the requests at a meeting on this and other related matters last Friday.

“They have stopped the testing altogether, so all the staff have not been tested. But we are being told that it should resume sometime next week,” sources told Caribarena.

In the meantime, testing results reaching Caribarena suggest that all the patients on the ward where the deceased patient was housed have tested positive for exposure and have yet to be contained. This group makes up for at least 10 percent of the overall hospital in-house population. Some 85 people are housed at the Clarevue Psychiatric Hospital.

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Ministry of Health officials are reported to have cautioned Clarevue personnel against spreading the notion that the patient in question passed away as a result of the disease. In the absence of an official autopsy such a conclusion would be mere speculation, the staff was informed.

“They say the gentleman did not die from TB and it has not been proven because there was no autopsy. But all the patients on that side have tested positive. It is bigger than expected”.

“We told them from the beginning that it must be contained and in order to do so, staff and patients must be tested and quarantine who needs to be quarantined. The staff have children. These children go to school and they are in contact with other people’s children. This is where you can have the outbreak and it looks like the government is just trying to sweep it under the rug,” the source said.

Notwithstanding, Chief Medical Officer in the Ministry of Health Dr Rhonda Sealey-Thomas has denied an outbreak of any kind at the psychiatric institution. However the “management” of persons suspected to have been in contact with the deceased has nonetheless begun in keeping with the public health guidelines.

This management process includes Purified Protein Derived or PPD testing and subsequent follow-up by an infectious disease specialist on an individual basis. The latter process reportedly has yet to be implemented.

Attempts to reach the Chief Medical Officer for a comment on the latest reports were unsuccessful.

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