California high school to test students for tuberculosis

(Reuters) - Some 1,800 students and staff at a southern California high school are to be screened for tuberculosis on Friday, after one pupil was diagnosed with the disease and dozens more may have been infected, health officials said. The mandatory medical screening at Indio High School about 135 miles outside Los Angeles comes after 45 students out of 131 who were screened for the illness this week tested positive for possible exposure. The numbers of those potentially infected were higher than expected, but the "the likelihood of the illness being passed from one person to the next is remote," said Cameron Kaiser, a Riverside County health official who ordered the expanded school-wide testing. Follow-up X-ray testing on Thursday identified five students who needed further examination for signs of the illness in the public high school in Indio, a city of some 80,000 residents, health officials said.



via Health News Headlines - Yahoo News http://news.yahoo.com/california-high-school-test-students-tuberculosis-090141478.html