Finding recent tuberculous infection in New Orleans. Results of tuberculin skin tests on New Orleans children from the inner city and Contact Investigation Program.

We tested infants and preschool-age children from the New Orleans Health Department programs for tuberculosis contact investigation and for tuberculin skin testing. About 7.8% (34 of 438) of the contacts and about 0.78% (107 of 13,797) of those given skin tests were tuberculosis-infected. Both programs, we concluded, detected enough recent tuberculous infection to be worthwhile as screening procedures.