TACOMA, Wash. — A Tacoma woman with tuberculosis was found in contempt of court orders Friday as she continues to refuse to isolate and get treatment.
A judge ordered for her involuntary detention, testing and treatment. A civil arrest warrant issued in March remains in effect.
Judge Philip Sorenson issued the arrest warrant, which authorized law enforcement to detain the woman beginning March 3. If arrested, she would be taken to a facility at the Pierce County jail for isolation, testing and treatment.
"We have worked with family and community members for more than a year to do everything we can to persuade this woman to take her medication to protect herself and our community," a statement from the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department released in March reads.
According to court documents, an officer with the Pierce County Corrections Bureau surveilled the woman's home in March. The officer saw the woman leave on a city bus, which dropped her off at a casino. Since then, the woman appeared not to be home. Additionally, her family members were unresponsive when the officer reached out.
"It is believed that the [woman] is actively avoiding execution of the warrant," Pierce County Corrections Bureau Chief Patricia Jackson wrote in a court declaration dated April 3.
The officer was told to stop surveillance "until a later date."
This case is the third in 20 years where the health department has sought a court order to detain someone who is potentially contagious and refusing to seek treatment for tuberculosis.
"In each case like this, we are constantly balancing risk to the public and the civil liberties of the patient," the March statement from the health department reads. "We are always hopeful a patient will choose to comply voluntarily. Seeking to enforce a court order through a civil arrest warrant is always our last resort."
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department sees about 20 cases of active tuberculosis a year. State law requires healthcare providers to report all active cases.
Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that often affect the lungs. It is spread through the air. Symptoms, according to the World Health Organization, include cough, fever, night sweats and weight loss.
Also, people died from it quicker back in the day because a lot of people who got it were poor and couldn't afford any potential treatments
It makes a lot of difference when you could have a private doctor and could move to a dry, warm environment
Tuberculosis sanatoriums were a big deal back in the day. They existed for all classes of society and in many places they were incorporated into official healthcare systems.
Ideally they would be placed in calm scenic rural surroundings, and parks and pathways would be made to allow patients to exercise by going for walks in the fresh clean air. Fresh air was considered a huge part of the treatment so when not exercising patients would lie in beds covered in blankets in covered verandas, exposing them to the fresh air.
Another important part of the treatment consisted in plenty of nourishing meals, in an attempt to stave off the disease and, especially at sanatoriums for the wealthy, distracting patients from their condition with food and drink.
The sanatoriums treated the disease to the best ability of medicine at the day and they would also expand into surgical procedures as they became available but survival rates were low and the sanatoria were more akin to hospices than hospitals.
Eventually advanced in hygiene, food safety and general living standards of the poor, as well as the development of vaccines and improved medical treatments made the sanatoria obsolete and they were closed or converted to other purposes around the middle of the 20th century.