ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Moving Fast to Fight TB’s Contagion

The Orange County Health Care Agency has demonstrated a valuable quality in a public institution--a willingness to learn from mistakes.

It asked federal and state health officials to critique the agency’s handling of a tuberculosis outbreak at La Quinta High School in Westminster last year. The review faulted the county for not being aggressive enough in combatting the outbreak, and county health workers agreed with the criticism and tightened procedures, as they should.

The Health Care Agency said it learned in June, 1992, that a La Quinta student had tuberculosis. Two private doctors treated her and assured officials that she was not contagious, the county said. The county now acknowledges that it waited too long, nearly a year, before taking over treatment of the student. By then she was thought to have infected 12 classmates with the disease, typically spread by coughing or sneezing. The county also took months to test other La Quinta students.

Contrast that with last month’s much better response when health officials learned that a Fullerton preschool worker had a contagious form of tuberculosis. The county quickly notified parents that children might have been exposed. Health Care Agency officials showed that they learned the importance of closely monitoring outbreaks of a disease unfortunately again on the rise.