Third TB Case for 2016 in South Korea Confirmed
A few days after news of the second case of tuberculosis in South Korea was confirmed, another case of the said disease was reported in the early morning of August 8, raising concerns over the increased number of TB patients in the country.
The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) confirmed that the new TB case involves a 23-year old nurse who works in the intensive care unit of the pediatric department at Korea University Ansan Hospital. She was diagnosed with the disease through a regular health check-up on July of this year. Because of this, KCDC told the media that a total of 51 babies and 57 health practitioners are going to be tested for TB.
The Korea Herald reported that since last month, there are two confirmed cases of TB involving two nurses in Seoul - the first one is working at Ewha Womans University Medical Center and the other at Samsung Medical Center. All of the three TB patients notably works in pediatric units in their respective hospitals.
After the diagnosis of the nurse with TB last month, 166 babies and 60 hospital staff at Ewha were tested for TB and it was determined that two babies and 5 co-workers of the nurse have latent TB. Latent TB is the condition which the TB bacteria is present in the body but it shows no symptoms and is inactive. However, without proper diagnosis and treatment, people with latent TB might develop TB at some point in their lives, so it is still important to monitor the cases of those who turned out positive for the disease.
Early this year, Health Minister Chung Chin Youb said, "When we introduced our national health insurance system in 1989, many state-run health centers were replaced by private clinics that focused on treatments rather than epidemiological research on infectious diseases, including TB."
In 2015, institutions such as schools, military bases, and day care centers and postpartum facilities have reported TB cases, prompting the Health Ministry to require all Korean citizens to be tested for latent TB for at least two times in their lifetime, ideally at age 15 and 40. The TB prevention program in the country has a 3.92 billion won budget for this year.