Applying Crisis Management Principles in Handling an Incident Report of Tuberculosis at a Kindergarten, Taiwan, 2019

Applying Crisis Management Principles in Handling an Incident Report of Tuberculosis at a Kindergarten, Taiwan, 2019

Inaccurate information causes misunderstanding, rumor, and panic in the affected population, as well as false reporting from social media. In this article, we shared strategies for delivering accurate information to the public in an incident report of tuberculosis (TB) case of a kindergarten teacher in southern Taiwan in 2019.
Crisis management consists of four stages: the prodromal, acute, chronic, and resolution stages. The key communication strategies applied in this case included setting up an emergency task force, conducting an epidemic investigation, clarifying inaccurate information in time, and proactively communicating with the people who involved in this incident, including teachers, staff, parents, and children. Due to the appropriate strategies applied in this incident, a high level of cooperation was achieved in the epidemic investigation. We were able to identify 96 contacts in time and discovered 29 latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) cases from the contacts, with 27 of them receiving LTBI treatment.
Moreover, this incident highlighted the insufficient knowledge among kindergarten teachers, staff, parents, and children about TB, and the need to educate this population about the basic knowledge of transmission and infection control of TB.