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rops Of Jupiter 71 .71 www.trainline.com ‘1 he new album from the band that brought you Meet Viruinia, featuring the new hit single r Drops Of_ Writ 4 ,1 .i1.1 l`nwttwell atid In’ BrcrAul \( The follow up to her Grammy’ Award-Winning album Don t miss Shawn Colvin performing the new single Whole New You on: Later with Craig Kilborn PrOttiali by John Leventhal lannni by Pub l’learreountvb www.shawncolvin.com www.columbiarecords.com Also on sale: “Steady On”, “Fat City”, “Cover Girl’, and Few Small Repairs” ‘ 0,1 r:\(1 1.h. ,,,,9 F ,tt,t,,,,nprred with the identical circumstances. “We decided to make nothing public until we ruled out all the common things, because there was no good cause for alarm,” Dr.Tulu said. “If we had made our fears public, it would have diverted resources away from our main focus, which was investigating this case, because we would have spent all of our time answering media calls. And if the word had gotten out, it would have created unwarranted hysteria. Probably everybody would have avoided that hospital, and maybe even Dallas, to a certain extent.” To an epidemiologist with a less steady temperament, the very notoriety attached to Ebolawhich has been the subject of a best-selling book and two Hollywood moviescould itself become a dangerous distraction. Dr. Tulu feels fairly certain that, should the health of the residents of Dallas ever be seriously compromised, Ebola will not be the cause. What Dr. Tulu fears most are not “hot” viruses that get everybody’s attention and persuade entire institutions to operate at peak performance, but seemingly mundane pathogens that evoke no such zealous response. The health issues that creep up on a city slowly are the ones that keep him up at night. Tuberculosis is a disease that nobody in Hollywood considers making a film about. “It doesn’t present as readily as the scary diseases,” said Dr. Tulu. “But it’s highly prevalent in developing countries, and many people don’t complete treatment there, which creates a high incidence of drug-resistant tuberculosis. That is going to be imported here through people who emigrate to work. And because it really takes some time for symptoms to manifest themselves, that leaves a lot of time for other people to be infected.” Lack of affordable health insurance and massive numbers of new immigrants have combined to create conditions ripe for a steep rise in TB cases. Periodically, nurses from the Dallas County Health Department fan out across the city to administer TB tests, but who knows how many cases they miss, as the testing is voluntary. Some monster bug might take this city by storm, but it’s far more likely, Dr. Tulu believes, that Dallas will slowly surrender to a less dire threat. He just sent off to the CDC the list of the “reportable diseases” that he had compiled for February. There were 26 new cases of TB, 2 percent more than the same month last year. Every month, Dr.Tulu watches as the number ofTB cases ticks upwards slightly; he wonders whether, one day, in the not-too-distant future, Dallas residents may wake up and find that their TB rates have approached those of a Third World country. Not even his recent brush with Ebola has dissuaded him from thinking that this is the real danger facing his adopted hometown. Helen Thorpe has written for The New York Times Magazine, Texas Monthly, Slate and other publications. 12 THE TEXAS OBSEHVEH 7/20/01