www.roanoke.com

Turns out that units often times see 1 to 5 percent of their Soldiers redeploy with an undesirable souvenir:  mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Despite that fact that nearly one-third of the world's population is infected with tuberculosis (TB), the U.S. is one of the few countries that does not vaccinate against the disease.  Granted, only about 5 percent of Americans are infected with TB, but it is a constant threat to American tourists, Soldiers, and the families of Soldiers returning from third-world countries.

A few days ago, the extent of my knowledge on tuberculosis was limited to seeing Doc Holiday in the movie Tombstone.  It is hard to forget Val Kilmer's portrayal of the "lunger," wiping his mouth and coughing up blood.

However, in conducting a post deployment health assessment, I was informed of the likelihood of my team being exposed to TB and that we would all be tested.  After all, we spent hours a day every day with Iraqis.

Afghanistan and Iraq seem to have quite an endemic problem with TB, especially in the recent years of war.

TB is an airborne disease, which spreads when the disease is active in the carrier.  When one first contracts the disease, it may remain dormant for years before symptoms occur. 

When the disease is discovered, a patient is bombarded with a regiment of antibiotics, which force the disease back into a dormant state and may leave no detectable trace.  There is, however, no 100 percent effective cure for the disease.  Vaccines are only proven effective in children.

With redeployment just around the corner, I will receive the TB test tomorrow to determine if I need treatment so that I am not a threat to the health of my wife and children in a few weeks.  After all, one would need to be on medication for two weeks in order to not be contagious.

Perhaps this just seems like a bigger issue to me than it really is.  But if I am being, I would rather have received the vaccine when I was an infant.