A 19-year-old Nepalese woman who took courses at Colorado State University at Pueblo died with tuberculosis Friday at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs.
Kalpana Dangol, who lived in Colorado Springs, was not a resident at CSU-Pueblo’s dormitories. State and local health officials would not say whether she was employed in southern Colorado.
She died hours after being admitted at 12:38 a.m.
Dangol went to the hospital’s emergency room complaining of abdominal pains, according to Richard Eitel, the hospital’s chief executive.
Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said it was “unlikely” that the woman died from an extensively drug-resistant or multidrug-resistant strain of TB.
“This is not an outbreak. This is a single case, so the approach from a public-health standpoint will be to find out who may have come into contact with the student,” Calonge said.
The woman had a clinical evaluation in February and was not contagious. State law does not require medical examinations for international students entering Colorado universities.
Federal immigration rules require anyone applying for an immigrant visa to undergo a medical examination.
Health officials said Dangol had no “significant travel history” since February. They do not know when she started coughing or showing symptoms of the illness.
“The problem, since the patient has expired, is that we can’t determine a communicability date,” Calonge said. “TB is not an acute illness. It is not something that you become infected with and you die very shortly.”
State health officials said they will not know the exact cause of death until an autopsy is completed.
Calonge said the woman’s death is not linked to the case of Andrew Speaker, who sparked worldwide concern when he traveled internationally with a extensively drug-resistant form of TB. Speaker is being treated at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.
Health officials in El Paso and Pueblo counties will try to contact patients who shared the emergency room with Dangol at Memorial Hospital and CSU- Pueblo students who may have been in close contact with her. .
“We’ll start out with ‘circles of potential risk,”‘ Calonge said. “We’ll start out with close contacts, friends, family, people that she lived with.”
Colorado has about 120 cases of active TB annually. Ten people died of the disease here in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.
“Tuberculosis is known as one of the great imitators; it’s the kind of infection that can hide for a long period of time,” Calonge said.
Nepal, Dangol’s home country, reported 180 cases of tuberculosis for every 100,000 people in 2005, according to the World Health Organization. About 23 of every 100,000 people in that country died of the disease.
Staff writer Karen Augé contributed to this report.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
Speaker update
Andrew Speaker, who made headlines after he crisscrossed the globe with rare, drug-resistant tuberculosis, remains at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.
Speaker is taking a host of antibiotics, and his doctors will decide soon whether the 31-year-old needs surgery, said William Allstetter, spokesman for National Jewish.
Speaker was honeymooning in Europe when he learned he has extensively drug-resistant TB.
Federal health officials say Speaker defied requests not to take a commercial flight home.
On Monday, officials said the U.S. border guard who allowed Speaker and his bride to cross over from Canada has retired.
