Children May Have Been Exposed To Tuberculosis At Brookline Day Care
BROOKLINE (CBS) – Authorities from the Department of Public Health will be at a day care center in Brookline Tuesday evening to address any concerns about a tuberculosis case there.
Parents received an email from Tiny World Child Care on Monday, warning them that their young children may have been exposed to tuberculosis.
No information about the patient is being released, but DPH is notifying anyone who may have been exposed. They are recommending and offering tuberculosis testing. Any positive results would be followed up with preventative treatment.
"DPH is monitoring the situation, and working closely with local officials and the Tiny World Child Care community," said Scott Zoback, Interim Director of Communications for the Department of Public Health. "Tuberculosis is preventable and treatable, and transmission of TB in these cases is very uncommon."
"It is a really scary disease, but I am not terribly concerned," said Katy Quissell, a parent and a public health professor at Boston University, who dropped her daughter off at the center Tuesday.
"Kids tend to not be as contagious and they do not spread it as easily as adults do."
Quissell still plans on bringing her daughter to the doctor.
"She is going to have a chest X-ray and she's going to have, probably, the skin TB test done to see," she told WBZ-TV.
If someone has acquired TB, they will likely not test positive until about three weeks after they've been exposed.
Symptoms include a cough that lasts three weeks or longer, coughing blood or phlegm, fatigue or weakness, loss of appetite, chills, or fever. Those with latent TB infection don't have symptoms or feel sick, and cannot pass on the disease.
"When I talked to the Department of Health, they said that it was an active TB infection, otherwise they wouldn't have gone through all of this." Quissell said. "I don't think that there is really any extreme threat."
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Karen Twomey reports
