A Tacoma woman who was arrested last year for repeatedly refusing treatment for tuberculosis has been cured, according to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
The department worked for over a year to persuade the woman to isolate and seek treatment.
In February 2023, the health department went to the Pierce County Superior Court for the 16th time to seek an arrest warrant, a rare "last resort" health officials can take to protect the public.
A judge issued a warrant for the woman's arrest in March 2023, ordering Pierce County sheriff's deputies take her to the county jail for isolation, testing and treatment, the health department said last year.
Deputies arrested the woman in June 2023 to be isolated and treated in a negative pressure room at the jail. "At that point, she realized how serious her situation was and decided to treat her illness," the health department said.
Later that month, Pierce County Judge Philip Sorenson released the woman with conditions, including isolating at home under court supervision.
The woman took medication, regained her health over time and tested negative for TB multiple times. The woman is cured, which means TB no longer poses a risk to her health, and she is not at risk of infecting others, the department said.
This case was only the third time in the past 20 years health officials sought a court order to detain someone who is potentially contagious and refusing treatment for TB.
Pierce County has about 20 cases of active TB per year. State law requires health care providers to report all active cases to the health department. According to the department, "nearly all patients we contact are more than happy to get the treatment they need to help protect themselves and our community."
TB is an infectious disease that usually affects the lungs. It also can affect lymph nodes, bones, joints and other parts of the body.
TB can be deadly but is curable with medication.
Most TB infections are latent or dormant (about 100,000 people in King County have latent TB infections), meaning a person has no symptoms and cannot spread the disease, according to health officials.
Active TB is much harder to spread than the cold or flu, health officials said. For an infection to occur, it typically takes repeated and prolonged exposure in a confined indoor space.
The number of people infected with TB rose globally in 2022 for the first time in years. Worldwide, 1.5 million people die from TB each year, making it the leading infectious killer, above COVID-19, HIV and AIDS, the World Health Organization said.
___
(c)2024 The Seattle Times
Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
