Tuberculosis is a serious disease and it has been around for a long time. But there are well-established ways to detect it and a range of drugs to treat it.

TB can be either latent, which isn't contagious, or active. A person must be in close contact with an infected person to become infected, which could potentially describe the conditions in a Russian orphanage. According to the Mayo Clinic, a woman with active TB can sometimes pass the disease to her fetus, but that is rare. In many cases, the body's own immune system defeats TB; that defeat can result in a positive TB test, but not in a contagious form of the disease. People whose immune systems have been compromised by a disease like HIV are more likely to get TB.

When you are considering referral, ask for vaccination records. If you get them before you travel, make sure they are among the information you share with the adoption medicine professional reviewing your referral. If you are traveling blind, your agency's in-country representative should be able identify it quickly on the report. When you are in Russia, ask if the child has ever been treated for TB, how long the treatment lasted and whether the full course of treatment was completed. Not completing treatment can leave a person at risk for developing drug-resistant TB later.

Get an appointment with your pediatrician for as soon as possible after you arrive home, and make sure your pediatrician gives your child a Mantoux test to check for TB. Both the Mayo Clinic and the American Lung Association note that it can be hard to detect TB in children, even with the Mantoux test. And the International Medicine Adoption program at the University of Minnesota, which supplied the data for the study in part one of this series, notes that TB can be hard to detect in children who were malnourished. Both of my kids' tests came up negative, but their ever-thorough pediatricians ordered chest X-rays just to be sure. They were fine.

If your child is found to have TB, don't panic. Both TB infections and the active disease can be treated with antibiotics, but your child may need to be on them for as many as 12 months.

Tuberculosis Resources:
American Lung Association
Centers For Disease Control
International Medicine Adoption program at the University of Minnesota
The Mayo Clinic

This Series:
Part One: Tuberculosis Scare?
Part Two: The State Of Tuberculosis In Russia Now
Part Three: Commonsense Advice On Tuberculosis

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