Active tuberculosis case confirmed at Waukegan High School in Illinois
A person associated with Waukegan High School north of Chicago was recently diagnosed with active tuberculosis, officials said Monday.
Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 said an "individual" at Waukegan High School was recently diagnosed with TB. The district did not specify whether this person was a student, a faculty or staff member, or a community member of another kind.
The Lake County Health Department confirmed to the school district that the person is isolated from others and undergoing treatment.
Those who may have been exposed to this person when contagious have been notified and are set to be tested, the school district said.
On Tuesday night, the Lake County Health Department held a virtual townhall about tuberculosis, where doctors took time to explain what TB is, how testing and treatment work, and the risks involved.
"TB is a serious disease. It spreads through the air, so we're concerned when people are in close spaces like schools and workplaces," said Lake County Health Department Executive Director Chris Hoff. "And while you may not hear a lot about TB anymore, we still get about 20 cases a year — and so our staff deals with this every day."
Also on the call, school officials said they are doing a deep clean at the school and working to improve ventilation.
The entire meeting was recorded, and the health department said they will release it in the coming days.
Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that spread from person to person through the air. It is contagious, but not spread as easily as viral infections such as colds or the flu.
TB can spread when people cough, sneeze, or sing — placing droplets into the air. It spreads most easily in crowded settings, the Mayo Clinic noted.
The school district noted that not everyone who gets infected by TB becomes sick. Some never develop symptoms, but can still carry and spread the disease.
Treatment of latent TB without symptoms can prevent active TB from developing — which is why testing is crucial, the school district said.
Symptoms of tuberculosis can include cough, night sweats, and weight loss.
People with HIV/AIDS or otherwise weakened immune systems are more likely to catch tuberculosis, the Mayo Clinic noted.
While tuberculosis usually affects the lungs, it can also affect other organs such as the kidneys, the fluid surrounding the brain and spine, the liver, the heart muscles, the genitals, the lymph nodes, the bones and joints, the skin, the walls of blood vessels, and the larynx, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Tuberculosis is now treated with antibiotics. But before drugs were developed to treat the disease, it was a serious public health threat in the U.S. In Chicago, the site bounded by Bryn Mawr Avenue, Central Park Avenue, Peterson Avenue, and Pulaski Road — now known as North Park Village —isolated and treated TB patients as the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium from 1915 until 1974.
Worldwide, tuberculosis remains a major public health crisis — especially since some forms of the disease are now resistant to drugs.
The World Health Organization reported that 1.25 million people died from tuberculosis worldwide in 2023.
