A Tuberculosis Outbreak in a Private-Home Family Child Care Center in San Francisco, 2002 to 2004

Abstract

BACKGROUND. Child care facilities are well known as sites of infectious disease transmission, and California child care facility licensure requirements include annual tuberculosis (TB) screening for on-site adults. In April 2004, we detected an adult with TB living in a private-home family child care center (child care center A). METHODS. We reviewed patient medical records and conducted a contact investigation. The investigation included all persons at the child care center, the workplace and leisure contacts of the adult patient with TB, and the household contacts of secondary case patients. Contact names were obtained through patient interviews. A positive tuberculin skin test result was defined as induration of ≥5 mm. DNA fingerprints of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates were analyzed. Outbreak cases were those that had matching DNA fingerprint patterns or were linked epidemiologically, if DNA fingerprint results were not available. RESULTS. Between August 2002 and July 2004, we detected 11 outbreak cases, including 9 (82%) among children (<18 years of age). All 11 outbreak patients lived or were cared for at child care center A. The 9 pediatric TB patients were young (<7 years of age), United States-born children of foreign-born parents, and 4 (44%) had positive cultures for M tuberculosis. Including isolates recovered from the 2 adult patients, all 6 M tuberculosis isolates shared identical, 7-band, DNA fingerprint patterns. The contact investigation identified 3 (33%) of the 9 pediatric cases; 2 (22%) presented with illness and 4 (44%) were detected by primary care providers during routine TB screening. Excluding case subjects, 36 (54%) of 67 named contacts had latent TB infection. CONCLUSIONS. Provider adherence to locally adapted pediatric TB screening recommendations proved critical to outbreak control. TB screening compliance by the child care center and more aggressive source-case investigation by the TB program might have prevented or abated this large pediatric TB outbreak.