Vilaj Espwa and TB

Hope Village or in Creole, Vilaj Espwa, encompasses over 125 acres of land and is home to 640 children with hundreds more coming to its two schools each day from poor neighboring communities. Volunteer physicians from the US began testing the children of Espwa for TB four years ago and began a treatment program in the fall of 2006 after discovering that about 350 of the children (45%) and 120 of the staff (60%) were positive for latent TB. The actual infection rate (persons with active TB) was last known to be 2% in 2006. In the last two years, several hundred individuals have began a 9-month treatment course with an 85% success in terms of therapy compliance as older teens and staff are more likely to refuse treatment.