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<\/div>\nThe arrest comes almost three months aftera civil arrest warrant was issued for her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A woman in Washington state who refused a judge’s order to isolate or have treatment for infectious tuberculosis for over a year was taken into custody on Thursday, New York Times<\/a><\/em> reported. The arrest comes almost three months after\u00a0a civil arrest warrant was issued for her.<\/p>\n The woman’s name has been withheld by health officials and was identified in the court papers by the initials VN.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a statement on Thursday, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department said that the woman was taken to the Pierce County Jail where she will be housed in a room ”specially equipped for isolation, testing, and treatment.”<\/p>\n \u201cWe are hopeful she will choose to get the lifesaving treatment she needs to treat her tuberculosis,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n The health department initially ordered the woman to isolate in January 2022 after being diagnosed with tuberculosis, as per the Independent.<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0officials worked with her family and community members for more than a year to try to persuade her to get treatment, but she refused to comply. In March 2023, the county was granted a civil arrest warrant to forcibly detain her.<\/p>\n The department said this case marks only the third time in the past 20 years that it needed to seek a court order to detain a potentially contagious patient who refused to see treatment.<\/p>\n It is not clear why the woman refused to isolate or receive treatment, Washington Post<\/a><\/em> said.\u00a0However, her lawyer Sarah Tofflemire claimed in a filing that the woman refused treatment as she doesn’t understand what is happening, as per\u00a0NBC News<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Under Washington state law, health providers are required to report cases and work with patients to make sure they get treatment to cure active cases of the disease.<\/p>\n Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that spreads to anyone who is in close contact with a patient, like family members or friends. It is considered potentially fatal.\u00a0Tuberculosis treatment takes three to nine months, according to Centres for Disease Control (CDC)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n