CASE HISTORY Debi Was an Ordinary Teenager Attending an Affluent American Public

Short Answer

CASE HISTORY
Debi was an ordinary teenager attending an affluent American public high school when she contracted tuberculosis (TB).She did not know the person who infected her.Infection requires inhalation of the causative bacteria.
Debi coughed all the time,felt tired,and was losing weight.Her coughing brought up blood.An X-ray revealed the signs of infection in her lung,including a large hole eaten away by the bacteria.
From Debi's sputum sample,a DNA sequence was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR).The DNA sequence revealed Mycobacterium tuberculosis,the cause of TB.Doctors prescribed isoniazid and rifampin,antibiotics that kill most strains of M.tuberculosis.But Debi's TB strain proved resistant to nearly all known drugs (MDR-TB).
Because drugs failed to eliminate the MDR strain,surgeons removed nearly half of her right lung to help the antibiotics overcome the infection.Debi recovered and returned to high school.She would have to continue taking antibiotics for years afterward.All the teachers and students in Debi's school were screened,and over 200 were found to have been infected by a student with tuberculosis misdiagnosed for two years.All required treatment to prevent disease.
When Debi contracted tuberculosis,she did not know who had infected her or how she had been infected.How could this be?