The City of St Joseph Health Department is following a possible case of tuberculosis.
Chief Administrative Officer Patt Lilly of Triumph Foods said in a news release that they were notified by the health department that a Triumph employee had been diagnosed with a possible case of TB.
Lilly says the employee worked for the company for about three weeks, and has been off work for the last several weeks.
“The company’s priority at this time is the health, safety and welfare of its employees, ” Lilly said. “As a public health matter Triumph Foods is working closely with the City of St. Joseph, Health Department. Officials with the City’s Health Department have advised us that it will only be necessary for them to conduct testing of a small group of employees as a precaution.”
Lilly says there’s no reason to be alarmed about infection from foods processed by the company.
“It should be understood that given the nature of how TB is spread it precludes any risk of exposure from food products. Thus there is no food safety issue associated with product produced at Triumph Foods,” he said.
Lilly would not comment beyond the prepared statement and referred questions to the health department.
The department routinely offers screening, testing, and treatment of TB for individuals interested in being tested or needing testing for employment, education, or otherwise.
The department works in conjunction with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
Officials say the department adheres to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s protocol when following active disease cases and conducting contact investigations.
Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is spread by air droplets from a cough or sneeze of an infected person. TB usually attacks the lungs but can attack any part of the body. People with active TB most often spread it to people they spend time with every day. This may include family members, friends, and co-workers or schoolmates. Tuberculosis is treatable and curable with the appropriate treatment regimen. In the United States, most people will recover from primary TB infection without further evidence of the disease.
Tuberculosis was an extensive problem in the United States and Europe in the early 1900s, and in the 1940s the first of several medications were discovered to treat TB. Trends in tuberculosis increase and decrease, fluctuating over time, but due to increased funding and attention to the TB problem, there has been a steady decline in the number of persons with TB since 1993.
The Tuberculosis Information Management System (TIMS) is a database developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and used by individual states to maintain a variety of demographic and case information on all tuberculosis disease cases that occur within each state.