Reading about the Pierce County woman who refuses treatment and confinement for her tuberculosis (TB) absolutely sends shivers down my spine and turns my hair redder than it already is.
I personally lived with this insidious disease as a young newlywed in the mid 1950s, along with two children, whose spouse found out he had TB. When his was active, he was confined to a sanitarium by law. He decided to leave the hospital one day and had just arrived home when there was a knock on the door and he was immediately taken into custody.
At one time, TB became the leading cause of death — more than war, more than plague, more than starvation, more than anything. That’s significant.
Education and preventive health measures designed for the public good along with newer drugs were developed, but even as sometimes happens, TB began showing signs of developing resistance to those drugs and enforcement of the laws was necessary, including detainment against their will for the public good.
TB cases have dramatically surged time and again for various reasons such as poverty, homelessness, travelers and especially mass illegal immigration. Currently, drugs taken for a six- to nine-month treatment program effect a cure in most people and doesn’t even require hospitalization.
Containment must be put in place for those who will not follow the prescribed course of treatment and continue to travel about in public places.
How dare she not comply, and worse, get away with it? This has already gone too far!
Kathleen Graeber
Chehalis
