Yearly meeting of TB Center Arctic

At the meeting, there was clinical staff from Lycksele, Skellefteå, Umeå NUS, (Infection Clinic, Children and Obstetrics departments), from the tuberculosis lab of Dep. of Clinical Microbiology and staff from Dep. of Communicable Diseases, the Dep. for Infection Control and Prevention and researchers from Umeå University.

There was a lot of interesting presentations and discussions: everyday work with BCG vaccination, analysis of preventive treatment during latent infection, contact tracing and treatment of patients.

A story told by a patient who went through the tough treatment of drug resistant tuberculosis just after her child was born left every one emotional: the woman told to the medical staff how much she appreciated all support and care during long-long months of her treatment. “Support is sometimes more important than medicines” – she said.  Complicated cases of tuberculosis were discussed in details to share the experience: how to help in the best way to a pregnant woman with her spinal cord destroyed by tuberculosis and how to organize the delivery of her baby?

How to cooperate with Finish colleagues around a tuberculosis patient traveling between Sweden and Finland? Abdominal tuberculosis or schistosoma parasite? - a real  detective story  to tell about how the correct diagnosis was established for this difficult case.

Apart from clinical discussions, there were also presentation of TB research projects ongoing at the hospital and Umeå University: biomarker studies using Umeå biobank as a resource,  tuberculosis epidemiology on the international level, analysis of the patient perspective of the treatment.

All participants could take home some useful knowledge and inspiration. Dear TB experts, see you next year again!