The Chihuahua state health district No. 2 reported 243 tuberculosis cases in Juárez in 2007, compared to 188 in 2006, prompting health officials to embark on a campaign to raise public awareness about the disease and encourage people with symptoms to get tested.
What is worrying is the amount of DR-TB;
Project Juntos officials also reported that eight people with drug-resistant tuberculosis have been asked not to travel or cross the border until they complete treatment and their doctors clear them. Juntos is a binational program that allows health officials in El Paso and Juárez to exchange information and monitor tuberculosis cases.
More worrying is that information transfer within the various departments is not seemless;
Dr. Miguel Escobedo, medical officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Quarantine Station in El Paso, said Customs and Border Protection inspectors are given information about infected patients who might be seeking to travel and pose health risks.
"I'm not aware of such a list of eight people at this time..
....Last year, U.S. Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked for an inquiry into how a Juárez businessman with drug-resistant tuberculosis, who was asked not to travel, had managed to cross the border 76 times.
Dr. Esteban Vlasich, binational tuberculosis program director for the Texas Department of Health, said then that the Juárez man was not contagious.
Drug resistant TB is of concern, as Marie P. Villa, tuberculosis program manager for the city of El Paso Department of Public Health said
"..it's critical for tuberculosis patients to complete treatment, mainly a strict regimen of antibiotics that can last from several months to two years, or until the disease clears up.
"Two ways people can develop drug-resistant TB is by not completing treatment or by catching it from someone who has contagious drug-resistant TB,"
Clearly despite government efforts El Paso continues to be a TB hotspot and the El Paso County Health Department have "agreed to provide Quantiferon testing services to outside physicians and laboratories."
