Howlingwolf
08-13-2008, 11:42 AM
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/health/entries/2008/08/08/typhus_in_austin_should_health.html
Typhus in Austin: Should health department have warned us sooner?
For the first time in decades and possibly ever (officials say they are unaware of cases before 2007), Austin is experiencing a typhus outbreak. The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department didn’t put the word out until asked about it by reporters — although it said it was about to alert doctors and the public when the media beat them to the punch Wednesday.
“We didn’t get a good handle until the last four weeks,” Jill Campbell, a disease surveillance program supervisor for the health department told the Statesman in an article today. Campbell also said the health department didn’t put out information because no one had died and it didn’t seem urgent.
The health department usually notifies the public pretty quickly when it thinks someone might have touched a rabid bat. Rabies is almost always fatal.
Typhus can be deadly if left untreated, but the kind of typhus the health department thinks Austinites have, murine typhus (typically found in South Texas), kills less than 5 percent of people if untreated by antibiotics. But the health department doesn’t know yet what type of typhus is going around.
This is what officials do know:
Typhus is spread by fleas that feed off of rodents, opossums and cats and then the fleas bite humans. So because it’s not spread person-to-person it doesn’t create a more common public health threat.
Two people last summer diagnosed with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever turned out to have typhus, which the health department learned in March, Campbell said. Then, in April, the health department learned about new cases of typhus in people, mostly in Central Austin, and more cases were reported through mid-July. That makes 15 known cases in Travis County since July 2007, and 13 in this year’s outbreak.
Ten of the 13 people who were infected have been hospitalized. That’s a pretty high rate, but it might only mean that doctors didn’t immediately know what they were dealing with and were being cautious, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A local pediatrician said the children she saw were not that ill. A man quoted in today’s story, however, said his son, Louis Kolker, missed a month of school and still doesn’t feel right.
If the health department had alerted people sooner, would people have been more vigilant about protecting themselves, their pets and their property from fleas? Would doctors have been able to diagnose people faster? What do you think?
Typhus in Austin: Should health department have warned us sooner?
For the first time in decades and possibly ever (officials say they are unaware of cases before 2007), Austin is experiencing a typhus outbreak. The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department didn’t put the word out until asked about it by reporters — although it said it was about to alert doctors and the public when the media beat them to the punch Wednesday.
“We didn’t get a good handle until the last four weeks,” Jill Campbell, a disease surveillance program supervisor for the health department told the Statesman in an article today. Campbell also said the health department didn’t put out information because no one had died and it didn’t seem urgent.
The health department usually notifies the public pretty quickly when it thinks someone might have touched a rabid bat. Rabies is almost always fatal.
Typhus can be deadly if left untreated, but the kind of typhus the health department thinks Austinites have, murine typhus (typically found in South Texas), kills less than 5 percent of people if untreated by antibiotics. But the health department doesn’t know yet what type of typhus is going around.
This is what officials do know:
Typhus is spread by fleas that feed off of rodents, opossums and cats and then the fleas bite humans. So because it’s not spread person-to-person it doesn’t create a more common public health threat.
Two people last summer diagnosed with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever turned out to have typhus, which the health department learned in March, Campbell said. Then, in April, the health department learned about new cases of typhus in people, mostly in Central Austin, and more cases were reported through mid-July. That makes 15 known cases in Travis County since July 2007, and 13 in this year’s outbreak.
Ten of the 13 people who were infected have been hospitalized. That’s a pretty high rate, but it might only mean that doctors didn’t immediately know what they were dealing with and were being cautious, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A local pediatrician said the children she saw were not that ill. A man quoted in today’s story, however, said his son, Louis Kolker, missed a month of school and still doesn’t feel right.
If the health department had alerted people sooner, would people have been more vigilant about protecting themselves, their pets and their property from fleas? Would doctors have been able to diagnose people faster? What do you think?