BY MEGHA SATYANARAYANA
? FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
? OCTOBER 2, 2008
Canadian health officials are looking for 27 people who got off a Detroit-bound bus in Windsor in August who may have been exposed to tuberculosis.
On Aug. 31, Greyhound bus 0367 left Toronto for Detroit, with stops in London and Windsor. At the border, said Mark Nesbitt, spokesperson for Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, United States officials stopped the bus. A passenger was flagged as having tested positive for tuberculosis and was later quarantined. The passengers who were on the bus at the checkpoint were tested for tuberculosis in the United States and Canada.
The passengers who left the bus in Windsor should go to their public health unit in Canada, or the health department in the U.S. to be tested by skin test, he said.
?The risk is incredibly low, but I can?t say we don?t expect anyone to not be infected,? he said. ?This is just us exercising every caution to make sure no one is walking around with TB.?
Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that leads to respiratory problems. It is highly infectious, and has lately become drug-resistant.
? FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
? OCTOBER 2, 2008
Canadian health officials are looking for 27 people who got off a Detroit-bound bus in Windsor in August who may have been exposed to tuberculosis.
On Aug. 31, Greyhound bus 0367 left Toronto for Detroit, with stops in London and Windsor. At the border, said Mark Nesbitt, spokesperson for Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, United States officials stopped the bus. A passenger was flagged as having tested positive for tuberculosis and was later quarantined. The passengers who were on the bus at the checkpoint were tested for tuberculosis in the United States and Canada.
The passengers who left the bus in Windsor should go to their public health unit in Canada, or the health department in the U.S. to be tested by skin test, he said.
?The risk is incredibly low, but I can?t say we don?t expect anyone to not be infected,? he said. ?This is just us exercising every caution to make sure no one is walking around with TB.?
Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that leads to respiratory problems. It is highly infectious, and has lately become drug-resistant.
