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Parents Warned After Babies At Sacramento's Methodist Hospital Are Exposed To TB

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Another Sacramento hospital is warning parents that their babies may have been exposed to tuberculosis.

The Sacramento County Public Health Department is working with Methodist Hospital to try and determine who may have been exposed to a person with active tuberculosis.

"The thing about TB is it stays in the body for a long time so for some people it could take months or years to exhibit symptoms," said Dr. Olivia Kasirye with the Sacramento County Department of Public Health.

Doctors with the county health department say that TB patient had been in and out of the neonatal ICU for two weeks at Methodist before realizing they could have been putting newborns in danger.

"It was only recently the person started exhibiting symptoms and therefore seen in the emergency room," Kasirye said.

Kasirye says that person has now been isolated.

"We anticipate it was just an exposure so none of them (the babies) have any symptoms at all and none of them are expected to have TB, but because of exposure we have to follow them up," she said.

However, doctors say it's still too early to tell if any of them contracted the bacterial infection and any answers could take at least six months.

Meanwhile, parents of those babies have been contacted and Dr. Kasirye says if any of them do test positive, as long as they treat it right away, they should be fine.

"Although the risk of infection is low, because these are small children we do take precautionary steps and make sure they get an evaluation," she said.

This comes just a month after a MRSA scare at Sutter Memorial as well as a TB scare there earlier this year when 35 newborns were exposed.

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