DELINE/FORT FRANKLIN - Seven active cases of tuberculosis were confirmed in Deline as of Thursday and health officials are investigating more possible cases while they urge people to get tested for the disease, which can cause severe lung infection and death.

There have been 12 confirmed cases in the territory between January and Dec. 10, eight of those in Deline. Last year there were 13 confirmed cases of TB in the NWT, which were attributed to an outbreak that began in Yellowknife and surrounding areas in March of 2007.

Deline residents are taking precautions and getting tested for the disease, but Deline First Nation band manager Pauline Roche said everyone is keeping calm.

"It seems like nobody is reacting to it. I mean, because everybody seems healthy and fine. It's not as big of a deal for us, living here in Deline. My brothers were sent to Yellowknife, but we're fine. Nothing is wrong," she said.

"There's no panic or anything like that in the community."

Wanda White, a communicable disease specialist with the Department of Health and Social Services in Yellowknife, said those who have been exposed to the disease in the past may be carriers of the bacteria although they feel healthy.

"In the NWT, there's a percentage of the population that carries the TB germ in their body and if, for any reason your health gets poor, whether it's nutrition, whether it's substance abuse, whether it's other chronic diseases like cancer or diabetes, these people can reactivate," she said.

"The bug is held in check by our immune systems but anything that comprises our immune systems can allow the bug to replicate and then it will cause damage to their lungs."

Symptoms of TB include persistent coughing, fatigue, night sweats and coughing up phlegm and blood.

Those with active cases are quarantined for two weeks until they are no longer contagious. In addition to the seven confirmed cases, eight Deline residents who have tested positive for the disease but have no symptoms and are not contagious are taking preventative drugs and should continue doing so for a total of nine months.

"It certainly requires a lot of monitoring and a lot of work by the patients themselves and the nurses to make sure people take their meds, but once they've taken their meds, they eradicate the TB from their bodies," said White, adding screening for the disease is as simple as a skin test or a chest X-ray, and that treatment is much more advanced now compared to long ago, when those infected might be sent to the hospital for years at a time.

"People may sometimes have to go out of their communities for two weeks but then they go back home and they're certainly not sent out for extended periods of time," she said.