The doctors Jordan: Fighting against spread of tuberculosis decades apart – West Central Tribune

GRANITE FALLS

— Dr. Kathleen Jordan was more than a bit suspicious when she opened the mail at her home in San Francisco, California, to find a professional-looking pamphlet in tribute to the late Dr. Kathleen Jordan of Granite Falls, Minnesota.

At the very end was a handwritten note by one of the pamphlet’s authors, Carol Heen. “Call me,” it read.

“Honey, this is either the most elaborate phishing attempt, or it’s really cool,” Dr. Jordan said she immediately told her husband.

It was more than cool. What she learned from the pamphlet and a phone call to Heen was that she shared much more than a name with the person she jokingly referred to as the “real” Dr. Jordan.

The “real” Dr. Jordan had grown up the daughter of missionaries in Africa. She devoted much of her professional life to a successful campaign to dramatically reduce tuberculosis and the deaths it caused in Minnesota before antibiotics made it a treatable disease.

She administered the Mantoux test to more than 1.5 million school children in the state as part of a contact tracing effort credited with greatly slowing the spread of tuberculosis in the state.

She and her husband, Dr. Lewis Jordan, cared for hundreds of people afflicted with tuberculosis at the Riverside Sanatorium they oversaw in Granite Falls. It held patients from Chippewa, Lac qui Parle, Renville and Yellow Medicine counties.

Dr. Kathleen Jordan and her husband, Dr. Lewis Jordan, cared for hundreds of people afflicted with tuberculosis at the Riverside Sanatorium they oversaw in Granite Falls.

Contributed

Dr. Kathleen Jordan died in 1993 at age 93.

“Inspirational,” said the modern-day Kathleen Jordan as she spoke Sept. 21 at the United Church of Christ in Granite Falls. So inspired by the real Kathleen Jordan, this Dr. Jordan made the trip to Granite Falls on her own dime to participate in the Jordan Project that was hosted Sept. 19-23 in tribute to the work of the late Dr. Jordan.

Carol Heen and her sister, Linda Heen, led a group of volunteers who brought hundreds of people, including many students from area high schools, to learn about the late Dr. Kathleen Jordan and infectious disease control during the multi-day event. It featured exhibits and activities to tell the story of Dr. Jordan, the control of tuberculosis, and to call attention to the danger it still represents.

Worldwide, 10 million people are diagnosed each year with TB, Dr. Jordan told her audience in Granite Falls, Each year, some 1.5 million will die.

Dr. Jordan knows the grim reality the numbers represent. She worked as part of a team from Case Western Reserve University in Uganda in 1999 treating people diagnosed with tuberculosis. The late Dr. Jordan earned her medical degree at Western Reserve University of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929.

Life expectancy in Uganda was age 37 at the time she was there, according to Dr. Jordan. AIDS was rampant, and those afflicted with it were 30 times more likely to come down with tuberculosis.

While working in Uganda, the modern Dr. Jordan said they relied on the very same contact-tracing principles that the late Dr. Jordan had employed in her campaign against this infectious disease.

Dr. Kathleen Jordan, of Granite Falls, spent her childhood in Algeria. Jordan became a household name in west central Minnesota for her work in fighting tuberculosis.

Contributed / Dr. Kathleen Jordan Project

Dr. Kathleen Jordan’s campaign against tuberculosis occurred in the 1930s and ’40s, when there were no antibiotics for effective treatment of this disease.

Because of this and other reasons, Dr. Jordan said the late Dr. Jordan had to overcome lots of resistance to testing for TB. The disease had a stigma. Those diagnosed knew that once identified, the risk of infection would keep others away.

Many of those who tested positive had latent tuberculosis, with no obvious symptoms. Overall, roughly 2% percent of those who tested positive for latent tuberculosis would have it become active in each subsequent year. The odds of it becoming active increase with age and with life events that affect the immune system, such as pregnancy.

And, there was nothing you could really do if diagnosed with latent tuberculosis but increase the surveillance on yourself, said Dr. Jordan.

Sanatoriums treated active tuberculosis patients with rest, fresh air and healthy diets. It worked for many, but not all. Dr. Jordan said that many who were diagnosed with active tuberculosis went to sanatoriums fearing they would not leave. Many were the family breadwinners and didn’t know how their loved ones would fare while they were bedridden for months.

Dr. Kathleen Jordan took on all of these challenges during an era when only 4% of medical doctors were women, noted her modern-day namesake.

Many of those who attended Dr. Jordan’s presentation last week knew the late Dr. Jordan.

“Many of us are Kathie’s kids,” Carol Heen said at the presentation.

Dr. Kathleen Jordan was known for her way with children, keeping them calm while she tested them for tuberculous. One way she did this was by having the child imagine they were hunting an animal, with their arm held out like a rifle.

Contributed/ Dr. Kathleen Jordan Project

She and others remembered how Dr. Jordan told them as young schoolchildren that they should imagine they were on a safari hunt. She asked them to point with their right arm at the hippopotamus or tiger they saw. That’s when she poked their left arm with the needle for the Mantoux test.

“You can do so much by doing one little thing,” said Dr. Jordan. She credits the late Dr. Jordan with saving many, many lives through her work.

“We don’t need to look for the red cape,” said Dr. Jordan while describing the late Dr. Jordan as a health care hero. “What you do no matter how big or little is going to be impactful,” she said.

Today’s Dr. Jordan is making her own impact in health care. Her focus today is on women’s health and preventative health as chief medical officer for Midi, a telehealth medical service operating in all 50 states.

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