Arizona: Portable X-Ray Machine to Help State Fight TB

Arizona health officials are buying a portable X-ray machine to help homeless shelters screen clients for TB. Close living conditions and lack of medical access put the homeless at increased risk for catching the airborne disease, said Will Humble, the state's assistant director of public health.

The mobile X-ray machine will primarily be sent to shelters in Tucson and Phoenix shelters. The digital images it will provide eliminate the need to develop film and allow for all results to be e-mailed to a central location for evaluation.

An on-site machine "would be fantastic," said Deb Harvey, information and referral services call supervisor, noting the disease is rampant among the homeless. Many Tucson shelters already require clients to undergo TB skin testing, she said. But taking clients for testing at the county Health Department is time-consuming and expensive, and transportation is a problem, she said.

Humble cautioned that TB should not be seen as a problem only affecting homeless people but rather as a public health threat. Some strains are becoming drug-resistant, and the disease is communicable. Many of the state's annual average of 300-320 active TB diagnoses are among the homeless, he said.

As for TB skin testing, "it's not all that reliable," Humble said. A person tested must return for the results to be interpreted, which can be difficult with a transient population. "But if you've got a patient in a shelter that you can identify quickly, run a chest X-ray, look at it, and say this looks high risk for active TB, then we can get that person into treatment." "The whole key is finding people early and getting them into treatment," he added.

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