Access to newer laboratory procedures: a call for action

Healthy People 2010, an initiative from the federal government, calls for action from tuberculosis controllers and tuberculosis laboratories in the fight to eliminate tuberculosis. Many patients, such as immunocompromised patients and those infected with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis strains, pose a challenge for care and diagnosis. Fortunately, many changes have occurred in the last decade to facilitate more rapid and accurate testing to assist with the care of these patients. California, Florida, New York and Texas have almost 50% of the tuberculosis cases in the United States, and their public health laboratories utilize different approaches to meet the same goal of rapid and accurate testing of specimens. With the targets of Healthy People 2010 (e.g., to reduce the average time for a laboratory to confirm and report tuberculosis cases to 2 days for 75% of cases) already looming on the horizon, innovative methods for achieving these goals should be evaluated. Using these public health laboratories as models, rapid, gold-standard testing methods should be provided to all patients in the United States. Soon it will be the year 2010..., are you ready to swiftly move forward?