Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.themonitor.com/news/edinburg-47121-investigative-program.html
County TB program recognized for investigative techniques
February 15, 2011 5:21 AM
Jared Janes
The Monitor
EDINBURG ? Through brick wall after brick wall, Gloria Salinas and her staff kept searching for Patient Zero.
In cracking a tuberculosis outbreak that most health professionals thought impossible to solve, Salinas proved that a diagnostic practice previously confined to the laboratory setting could be applied in the time-intensive investigations that are her clinic?s forte.
Salinas, the TB program manager for the Hidalgo County Health and Human Services Department, has spent the last 14 years handling TB prevention and treatment in a county notorious for its massive tuberculosis investigations. She?s worked TB outbreaks in households, workplaces or in schools, where the legwork usually involves testing anywhere from 30 to 200 of the patient?s ?contacts? for TB.
The paperwork detailing a single tuberculosis case is enough to fill a filing cabinet drawer.
Patient confidentiality prevents Salinas from discussing specific details of the 10-month investigation.
But she said her pulmonary clinic honed the use of a genotyping database in a way that hadn?t been done before in the state. The genotyping database catalogs specific strains of the TB bacteria and identifies the patients who contracted each strain.
In essence, Salinas showed that public health officials could trace a specific tuberculosis outbreak back to its source using a nationwide database of TB specimens. It?s an approach similar to law enforcement?s groundbreaking use of DNA to solve crimes...
County TB program recognized for investigative techniques
February 15, 2011 5:21 AM
Jared Janes
The Monitor
EDINBURG ? Through brick wall after brick wall, Gloria Salinas and her staff kept searching for Patient Zero.
In cracking a tuberculosis outbreak that most health professionals thought impossible to solve, Salinas proved that a diagnostic practice previously confined to the laboratory setting could be applied in the time-intensive investigations that are her clinic?s forte.
Salinas, the TB program manager for the Hidalgo County Health and Human Services Department, has spent the last 14 years handling TB prevention and treatment in a county notorious for its massive tuberculosis investigations. She?s worked TB outbreaks in households, workplaces or in schools, where the legwork usually involves testing anywhere from 30 to 200 of the patient?s ?contacts? for TB.
The paperwork detailing a single tuberculosis case is enough to fill a filing cabinet drawer.
Patient confidentiality prevents Salinas from discussing specific details of the 10-month investigation.
But she said her pulmonary clinic honed the use of a genotyping database in a way that hadn?t been done before in the state. The genotyping database catalogs specific strains of the TB bacteria and identifies the patients who contracted each strain.
In essence, Salinas showed that public health officials could trace a specific tuberculosis outbreak back to its source using a nationwide database of TB specimens. It?s an approach similar to law enforcement?s groundbreaking use of DNA to solve crimes...