ATLANTA: SARS on a plane. Mumps on a plane. And now a rare and deadly form of tuberculosis, on at least two planes. Commercial air travel’s potential for spreading infection continues to cause handwringing among public health officials, as news of a jet-setting man with a rare and deadly form of TB demonstrates.
“We always think of planes as a vehicle for spreading disease,” said Dr Doug Hardy, an infectious disease specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
In the latest case, a Georgia man with extensively drug-resistant TB ignored doctors’ advice and took two trans-Atlantic flights, leading to the first US government-ordered quarantine since 1963.The man, who officials did not identify, had been quarantined at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital until Thursday morning, when he was transferred to Denver’s National Jewish Hospital for treatment, Jewish Hospital spokesman William Allstetter said.
He walked into the building and said he felt fine, Allstetter said.
The hospital has treated two other patients with what appears to be the same strain of tuberculosis since 2000 and both improved enough to be released, according to Dr. Charles Daley, head of the infectious disease division at National Jewish.—AP
