In April, the CDC sent a warning to health officials in Florida, that Jacksonville was undergoing the worst outbreak of tuberculosis in 20 years, involving 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, and that it would require concerted action to stop, according to a story from The Palm Beach Post. At the time Florida Governor Rick Scott and the Florida legislature were busy making cuts to health care, one that specifically involved closing the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana.
A.G. Holley State Hospital is the hospital that treats TB cases and has done so for 60 years. According to the Post, officials went ahead and closed the hospital 6 months early.
The warning from the CDC went "unseen" by officials and Floridians would be kept in the dark about the outbreak until June. By that time the outbreak had spread from Jacksonville to Miami.
The information should be open to the public under Florida's Sunshine Laws, and yet the reporter investigating the outbreak from the Post had to travel to Tallahassee to demand the records in person. Records that the public has every right to see.
According to the Post, today, three months after it was sent to Tallahassee, the CDC report still has not been widely circulated, and the outbreak is far from contained. There's been no response from Rick Scott's office which merely asked the Post to forward a copy of the letter from the CDC to his office.
From the Palm Beach Post:
3,000 people in the past two years may have had close contact with contagious people at Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, an outpatient mental health clinic and area jails. Yet only 253 people had been found and evaluated for TB infection.
Only now that it has spread beyond the homeless population to other areas including Miami is the public hearing anything about it.
This is a must read from the Palm Beach Post.
This is a public health threat, one that the public has a right to know about, and something we should expect the governor and our elected officials to be on top of.
"Should" being the operative word here. The governor's only interest in health care seems to be in finding ways to cut it, most recently saying "we can't afford" to implement Medicaid, based on his own "facts."
Here's a fact: This is unconscionable.
