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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The first month of the year isn't even over but health officials are already reporting four new cases of tuberculosis in January.

Cheryl Case, a communicable disease specialist with the department of Health and Social Services, would not identify where the cases were reported but said a thorough investigation in 2007 when the outbreak first began has been critical to keeping the outbreak from spreading even more.

"A lot of time was spent determining who were those people staying there and who they lived with or spent a lot of time with," said Case, referring to the Salvation Army's homeless shelter.

"We kept track of all that right from the onset. It's a systematic approach and we're keeping accurate records to make sure we keep progressing forward."

Fourteen cases of tuberculosis were reported in the NWT last year, seven of them reported by the Yellowknife Health Authority.

Case said more than half the cases reported last year were linked to Yellowknife's homeless population where an outbreak began in March 2007.

"Just over half were related to the TB outbreak among the homeless," she said. "But there were a few that were not. They were in the general population."

Case said Health and Social Services has been working diligently to get the tuberculosis outbreak under control, noting over 90 per cent of all cases reported are curable with the same antibiotics used during the 1950s and 60s.

"Some of our major initiatives have been spent educating health officials and the general population with some of the key messages that TB is curable," she said.

"If people understand some of the common signs and symptoms of TB then they'll get identified earlier and once we can detect it early, they start treatment early and it will stop the transmission of the disease."

Some of the more classic signs of tuberculosis are prolonged fatigue, weight loss and "night sweats," where a person sweats more than normal while sleeping. The most classic symptom is a cough lasting more than two or three weeks.

"If they can't account for why they're coughing then TB should be one of the considerations," she said. "If people believe they've been exposed to TB they should go to their community health centre or their doctors."