December 19, 2005—If your company employs workers from countries where tuberculosis is common, you may want to consider pre-hire TB screenings. That’s the recommendation of a recent report from Yale University researchers.
The study examined the prevalence of TB and risk factors among workers in an industrial setting after one employee was hospitalized for TB in November 2003. Both the hospitalized worker and a “substantial” portion of the facility’s workplace were immigrants from Central or South America, regions known to have high TB prevalence, researchers noted.
The study concluded airborne worker-to-worker TB transmission had occurred at the facility. Among the 97 tested, 36 had positive skin tests. Of these, 29 were from countries with high TB prevalence. However, researchers stressed that although being born in a country where TB is common is the strongest risk factor for contracting the disease, positive skin tests among coworkers, regardless of birthplace, were higher at the worksite than in many community studies.
The study was published in the November issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. For more information, visit the magazine’s Web site.
