Choi Young-doo, a father of two children, received an abrupt phone call from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August. He was told that his second child, born in June, may have been exposed to tuberculosis while staying at a Seoul-based postpartum center for the first two weeks of his life.

“It was just really absurd,” Choi told The Korea Herald. “I thought no one ever got TB in our country anymore.”

Choi is one of 150 parents whose newborns were exposed to the virus by a nurse at the facility, a franchise postnatal center owned by DGRM Ltd., and who together filed a lawsuit against the center seeking financial compensation, following a criminal suit in September. Some 120 infants are believed to have been exposed to TB at the center from June to August. 

Following the phone call in August, Choi and other parents were invited to meet with health authorities at the KCDC. They were told not to worry. “I was told that the chance of my son being diagnosed with TB was like 1 in 1,000,” he said. But just about a week later, Choi’s newborn was diagnosed with latent TB (LTB), meaning the bacteria was in his body but inactive and causing no symptoms. 

He was told by the doctor that his son still had to take antibiotics, as without treatment about 5 to 10 percent of those with LTB develop the TB disease at some time in their lives.

“I was also told (from my doctor) that even if he takes antibiotics now, there is no guarantee that he won’t develop TB later in his life,” he said. “It just broke my heart. I was so angry at the medical authorities for letting this happen just a few months after the MERS outbreak.”

As of Monday, 23 infants had been officially diagnosed with the disease, and 57 others, including Choi’s son, had been diagnosed with LTB.

Each victim stayed at the facility for about a week. The nurse who infected the infants was told by her doctor in July that she may be TB-positive after taking a chest X-ray, but continued to come to work regardless.

“The parents of the infants who have been infected by TB, and those whose babies have been told to take antibiotics to avoid developing TB later, deserve financial compensation from the center as they have so immensely suffered emotionally, especially with the side effects of the TB drugs,” the parents’ lawyer Lee Sung-jun said in the complaint.

At most postpartum care centers, which are largely unique to South Korea, newborns stay in a separate room with other babies away from their mothers and are looked after by nurses on shifts. They are united with their mothers for breast-feeding and other bonding time. The schedule for the mothers, who often opt for the service for postpartum rest, includes body massages, facials, child care education classes and exercise sessions.

The parents are each seeking legal compensation ranging from 1.5 million won ($1,300) to 8 million won for emotional and financial damages, especially for having to make their infants take tuberculosis medication that can be highly toxic to the liver.

According to Yeyul, a law firm representing the parents, their infants have been taking Rifampicin, also known as Rifampin, an antibiotic to treat TB and LTB. The babies experienced the severe side effects of the drug, including vomiting, loss of appetite, blood in the urine and sleepiness.

“My baby also experienced loss of appetite and diarrhea,” said Choi.

Choi claimed that the owner of the postnatal center, the CEO of DGRM Ltd., never offered a proper apology to the parents.

The CEO, surnamed Kim, had been scheduled to meet with the parents and the officials of the KCDC in October, but abruptly canceled his attendance just a day before the event. “He once told me, ‘It’s not like the babies are dead,’” Choi said.

Choi also said that the KCDC’s early handling of the outbreak was extremely unprofessional. “As parents, we always kept in touch with one another,” he said. “So we knew that in September that at least 26 children were diagnosed with LTB.

“But the KCDC announced that only 13 had been confirmed with LTB after their own investigation. It turns out they simply didn’t know some parents chose to spend their own funds to get tested by a different doctor who wasn’t recommended by the KCDC.”

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)