Tuberculosis Control

Diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up services for patients with active tuberculosis, and their contacts, are provided at Sweetwater-Nolan County Health Department. Medications are available when needed to positive reactors not associated with an active case of tuberculosis. These patients must present with a negative chest x-ray and a prescription from their private physician for the medications.

Tuberculosis Facts

Tuberculosis is a Global Emergency

• More people are dying of TB today than ever before. 
• Worldwide, TB kills 8,000 people per day. 
• TB is the biggest killer of young people and adults in the world today. 
• One third of the world’s population is infected with TB.  
• If a person is sick with TB that person is likely to infect another 10 to 15 people in just one year.
• TB sends many self-sustained families into poverty.  
• Multiple Drug Resistant (MDR) TB is at least 100 times harder to cure than regular TB disease. 
• MDR can develop when patients get the wrong drugs, drug supply is unreliable or patients stop taking their medicines because they feel better.

TB and Children

• Worldwide, over 100,000 children will die from TB this year.
• Hundreds of thousands of children will become TB orphans this year.
• MDR TB in poor countries can be a death sentence.

TB and Women

• Worldwide, TB is the single biggest killer of young women.
• Over one million women will die needlessly from TB this year.

TB and HIV

• TB accounts for one third of AIDS deaths.
• If a person is HIV positive, that person is 30 times more likely to develop active TB.