Hundreds of babies possibly exposed to TB at Texas Hospital

More than 700 newborns and 40 employees of a Texas hospital may have been exposed to a worker who had an active case of the sometimes-deadly tuberculosis, health officials said on Friday.

The employee, working in a nursery at Providence Memorial Hospital in El Paso, interacted with patients for months before later being diagnosed with the disease, the El Paso Department of Public Health said.

A total of 706 babies and 43 employees were possibly exposed to the infected worker between September 2013 and August 2014, the health department said. Health and hospital officials were working to contact the affected families and would provide screening and follow-up care free of charge.

"TB is a serious but treatable disease that is spread through the air. Although TB is not easy to catch from another person, we want to be extra sure that your child is examined," the health department said in a letter to parents.

Tuberculosis, a potentially fatal disease that generally affects the lungs, can lay dormant in a person's body for months or years and is spread when person with an active case coughs, sneezes, or speaks, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tuberculosis is a potentially deadly disease that's been around for thousands of years. Find out how this ages-old illness could affect your health today.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that infects the lungs and may spread to other parts of the body. Tuberculosis has been plaguing humankind for thousands of years; it has been and still is one of the most deadly infectious diseases in the world.

What is Tuberculosis?

The illness tuberculosis, or TB, is an infection caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These bacteria infect the body, concentrating their effects in the lungs, but they may also spread to the:

Brain
Kidney
Bones
Joints
Lymph nodes
Spine

Babies, and other people with weakened immune systems, are particularly vulnerable to becoming infeced, the CDC said.

More than 80 percent of all TB cases occur in only 22 countries, including nine in Africa, 11 in Asia, and Russia.

Detection rates have improved over the last 15 years, but nearly 40 percent of active infections in those nations still go untreated.

Even worse, only a quarter of the estimated 1.4 million people infected with both tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS have been identified, the study reported. HIV increases the risk of TB 20 fold.

Up to two-thirds of cases in South Africa and Zimbabwe, for example, are thought to be caused by HIV co-infection.