NM celebrates drop in tuberculosis
Rates fall by 66 percent in 20 years; now at lowest level on record
As people around the globe observe World Tuberculosis Day on Saturday, New Mexico marks the occasion with the welcome news that between 1996 and the end of 2017, infectious tuberculosis in the state decreased by 66 percent.
The number of people diagnosed and treated for new cases of infectious TB in 2017 was 37, down from 89 two decades ago, New Mexico Department of Health Cabinet Secretary Lynn Gallagher said during a Thursday news conference at the Project ECHO offices at the University of New Mexico.
“TB rates are now at their lowest point on record in New Mexico and in the United States,” she said. The disease, however, is far from being eradicated and in 2016 it killed 1.7 million people around the world.
In addition to observing World Tuberculosis Day, Gallagher said, the New Mexico Department of Health’s Tuberculosis TeleECHO Clinic and Project ECHO at UNM are observing the third anniversary of their partnership using telehealth to improve access to high-quality TB care throughout the state.
ECHO, an acronym for Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes, is a telehealth platform that is being used to reach out to vulnerable communities and provide them with tools, including medical and public health expertise, which they can then use to provide effective treatments in their own communities.
Tuberculosis is caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis germ and generally affects a person’s lungs. The bacterium
becomes airborne and can spread when a person coughs or sneezes and another person inhales that air containing the contaminated droplets. Symptoms may include weight loss, loss of appetite, night sweats, fever, fatigue, chills, protracted coughing, sometimes coughing up blood, and chest pain.
Not everyone who has TB has symptoms, as with people who have latent TB infection, said Diane Fortune, TB program manager for the NMDOH. The only way to identify them is through a skin or blood test.
Using the TeleECHO network, health care providers around the state are identifying these people through skin or blood tests before they become infectious and are able to transmit to other people, she said. About a year ago, a state statute was adopted to make all positive TB tests reportable to the NMDOH.
“That way, we can get some good surveillance data so we know where to target our resources and which individuals are most at risk for developing active tuberculosis,” Fortune said.
Dr. Sanjeev Arora, director of UNM’s Project ECHO, said the initiative began 14 years ago to work with people diagnosed with hepatitis C. Since then, ECHO has expanded to support front line clinicians around the state treating more than 40 different conditions and diseases.
Arora said the goal is to get countries around the world to adopt the ECHO model, touching the lives of 1 billion people by 2025.