The person escorting her into the room, however, said, “Just shut up and get in the room!” She stepped inside and the door slammed shut behind her.
Within the last two weeks, 250 students and 40 adults at St. George School in southeast Winnipeg started undergoing tests for tuberculosis. According to Dr. Pierre Plourde of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, they had shared classrooms with a “gregarious” student which was found to be infected with tuberculosis. It caused quite a stir.
Imagine the outrage of parents and citizens if school staff knowingly exposed them to a person infected with TB. I can hear it now. “We want an inquest into this deliberate exposure to a communicable disease.” Someone else would demand, “We want the school division to clarify their policy regarding mandatory quarantine and treatment of people with TB.”
Before you jump to conclusions, however, understand that the woman mentioned in the first two paragraphs was not that girl in that school in St. Vital.
Rather, she was a prostitute. She was being escorted into a jail cell. She was fevered, coughing, and did have tuberculosis.
Most people would freak out if the person in the first paragraph was a student in a school. But if it happens to a woman in jail, the reaction seems quite different.
It’s as if some have become “social Darwinists,” a variation on the “survival of the fittest” theme. If the prostitute dies, some idiots might figure that’s good riddance. And if she infects someone else in jail and they die, some suggest that would be like killing two birds with one stone. Some people have hearts of stone.
Is the reaction to TB in school stronger than the reaction to TB in jail because people figure kids are more important than crooks?
Before you answer that question, I have a few thoughts for consideration.
The people sharing cells with infected prostitutes or drug dealers are there for many different reasons. They will return to many different communities after sharing air-time in that cell, bathroom, shower and cafeteria. Many have wives and kids that go to school. Get my drift?
It might also be noted that prostitutes and dealers are somewhat more “gregarious” than the student in that classroom. When one prostitute has contagious TB, she shares very intimate time in cars with closed windows with between 10 – 30 men a day. Sucking the same air. Even if guys stop at the convenience store for a condom, they probably don’t stop at Revy for a mask. Up close reception of a cough or sneeze brings a chance they’ll carry home TB to their kids - as well as STD’s to their partners. And many customers are frequent breathers.
And for some, it isn’t even about sex. Some web sites list recipes and ingredients for crack. All but one ingredient of crack is legal. You can even buy the baking soda off the counter at our local 24/7 Mohawk gas station, along with the gas line antifreeze used to clean your pipe. One web site suggests, “if you don’t have a dealer, talk to a hooker. They have the hook up.”
If simply sucking air with an infected person isn’t enough to give you chills, imagine the implications of customers sharing a crack pipe with a TB carrier.
It is very likely that the student in St. Vital will complete the 6 month treatment and follow guidance from physicians. Street involved TB carriers, however, are less likely to comply with schedules and complete treatment. This makes the bacteria resistant to antibiotics, exacerbating the problem.
It’s estimated that 90% of sex trade workers in Bombay’s red light district have tuberculosis. In 1995, the World Health Organization reported that tuberculosis killed three million people. In Manitoba there are over 100 documented new cases of TB each year.
I’m not a doctor, and I don’t want to create a panic among families of all the suburban and rural men sucking air in close quarters with prostitutes. Not every prostitute is infected. I’ve been told that infection is not “automatic.” Hepatitis and HIV are a far greater risk.
But the reaction and reality to TB is instructive. This not just a problem for people you don’t really care about anyway. If we don’t care about it in others, it’ll come back to bite us all.
Rev. Harry Lehotsky
514 Maryland Street
Winnipeg, Mb R3G 1M5
(204) 775-4929
lehotsky@escape.ca