© 2003 American Public Health Association
At the time of the study, Dennis Y. Kim was with the Epidemic Intelligence Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga. Renee Ridzon was with, and David Crowder and Zachary Taylor are with the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Beverly Giles and Teresa Mireles are with the Sussex County Health Unit, Delaware Health and Social Services, Georgetown. Kelli Garrity, A. Leroy Hathcock, and Robert Jackson are with the Division of Public Health, Delaware Health and Social Services, Dover. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Zachary Taylor, MD, Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Mail Stop E-10, Atlanta, GA 30333 (e-mail: zxt0{at}cdc.gov).
Foreign-born persons from countries where tuberculosis (TB) is endemic make up a significant percentage of poultry industry workers in Delaware, a leading poultry-producing state. Many of these workers enter the United States without documentation and assume multiple identities, making it difficult for public health staff to investigate TB contacts who work in the poultry plants. The Sussex County Health Unit of the Delaware Division of Public Health developed a no-name TB tracking system to facilitate identification and treatment of poultry plant workers with TB infection and disease in a high-risk population whose members assume one or more aliases. Completion rates for treatment of latent TB infection in this group increased from 48% to 64% 2 years after the programs implementation. This article has been cited by other articles:
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