Man with rare TB under US quarantine

A MAN with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first US government-ordered quarantine since 1963 said he took one transatlantic flight for his wedding and honeymoon and another because he feared for his life.

Hundreds of health authorities around the world are now scrambling to track down passengers who were seated near the man for testing, US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding said yesterday.

“There are two aspects to this,” said Ms Gerberding.

“One is, is the patient himself highly infectious? Fortunately, in this case, he’s probably not. But the other piece is this bacteria is a very deadly bacteria. We just have to err on the side of caution.”

Health officials said the man had been advised not to fly and he knew he could expose others when he boarded the jets from Atlanta to Paris, and later from Prague to Montreal.

The man, however, said doctors didn’t order him not to fly and only suggested he put off his long-planned wedding in Greece. He knew he had a form of tuberculosis and that it was resistant to first-line drugs, but he didn’t realise it could be so dangerous, he said.

“We headed off to Greece thinking everything’s fine,” said the man, who declined to be identified because of the stigma attached to his diagnosis.

He flew to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. While in Europe, health authorities reached him with the news his TB was a rare, “extensively drug-resistant” form, far more dangerous than he knew. They ordered him into isolation, saying he should turn himself over to Italian officials.

Instead, the man flew from Prague to Montreal on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104, then drove into the United States at the Champlain, NY, border crossing. He said he was afraid if he didn’t get back to the US, he wouldn’t get treatment needed to survive.

He is now at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital in respiratory isolation. CDC officials have recommended medical exams for cabin crew members and passengers who sat within two rows of the man on the flights.

But Ms Gerberding noted that US health officials have had little experience with the “extensively drug-resistant” form. It’s possible it may have different transmission patterns, she said. Officials simply don’t know yet. Tuberculosis kills nearly two million people each year worldwide.