Posted on 05/30/2007 10:35:22 AM PDT by Cinnamon Girl
'This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've co-operated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy.'— Man with drug resistant TB says he returned to U.S. despite risks to get treatment
A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 told a newspaper he took one trans-Atlantic flight for his wedding and honeymoon and another because he feared for his life.
Hundreds of health authorities around the world including Canada are now scrambling to track down passengers who were seated near the man so they can be tested, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Julie Gerberding said Wednesday. "There are two aspects to this," Gerberding said. "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 that the man had been advised not to fly and that he knew he could expose others when he boarded the jets from Atlanta to Paris, and later from Prague to Montreal.
The man, however, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that 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 that was resistant to first-line drugs, but he didn't realize 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.
Isolation order
He flew to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. While in Europe, health authorities reached him with the news that further tests had revealed 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, N.Y., border crossing. He told the newspaper he was afraid that if he didn't get back to the U.S., he wouldn't get the treatment he needed to survive.
He is now at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital in respiratory isolation.
Officials with the CDC and the Public Health Agency of Canada have recommended medical exams for cabin crew members and passengers who sat within two rows of the man on the flights. The advice is consistent with guidelines from the World Health Organization.
The other passengers are not considered at high risk of infection because tests indicated the amount of TB bacteria in the man was low, said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine.
But Gerberding noted that U.S. health officials have had little experience with the "extensively drug-resistant" form. It's possible it may have different transmission patterns, she said. He didn't have symptoms and didn't appear to be coughing, but officials simply don't know yet. Tracking passengers
Dr. Howard Njoo of the Public Health Agency of Canada said it appeared unlikely that the man spread the disease on the flight into Canada. Still the agency was working with U.S. officials to contact passengers who sat near him.
Anyone in Canada with questions about TB or this particular case can contact the Public Health Agency of Canada through Health Canada's toll-free number at 1-866-225-0709.
French health officials have asked for lists of all passengers seated within two rows of the infected man, and Czech airline CSA is contacting passengers and co-operating with health authorities, airline spokespeople said.
The man told the Journal-Constitution he was in Rome during his honeymoon when the CDC told him to turn himself in to Italian authorities to be isolated and be treated. The CDC told him he couldn't fly aboard commercial airliners. No-fly list
"I thought to myself: You're nuts. I wasn't going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged," the man said.
He told the paper he and his wife decided to sneak back into the U.S. via Canada. He said he voluntarily went to a New York hospital, then was flown by the CDC to Atlanta.
He is not facing prosecution, health officials said. His wife has tested negative for TB and is not considered a risk to public health.
"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the paper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've co-operated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."
CDC officials told the Associated Press they could not immediately comment on the interview.
The quarantine order was the first since the government quarantined a patient with smallpox in 1963, according to the CDC.
Tuberculosis is a disease caused by germs that are spread from person to person through the air. It usually affects the lungs and can lead to symptoms such as chest pain and coughing up blood. It kills nearly two million people each year worldwide.
In Canada, there have been two reported cases of XDR-TB, one in 2003 and the other in 2006, both in Ontario, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. The U.S. had 17 XDR-TB cases since 2000, the CDC said.
Health officials worry about "multidrug-resistant" TB, which can withstand the mainline antibiotics isoniazid and rifampin. The man was infected with something even worse — "extensively drug-resistant" TB, also called XDR-TB, which resists many drugs used to treat the infection.
Just for the hell of it. I know y’all don’t know too much about that, but there it is!
Yeah...you are very wrong.
6 month or up to 12 month regimen ( depending on the type of TB...Pulmonary, Milliary, etc. ) of oral medication....is the norm.
That's one of the reasons that people don't comply. It's a hassle, and it's a long, long time.
First line anti-biotics are Isoniazid..sometimes called INH, Rifampin, Pyrazinamide, and Ethambutol.
FWIW-
Thanks!..I stand corrected!
I understand that it costs over a half million dollars to treat a single case of the type of TB he has, and isn’t generally successful. What if he had started an epidemic, killed millions? I don’t think he should be murdered, but if his stupidity had infected just one person then yes, he should be executed, and I think he should be locked up the rest of his life regardless. He’s obviously too stupid or too selfish and sociopathic to care what happens to others.
I agree, we should execute all stupid people.
Patient Zero was said to have spread AIDS all over the globe, essentially starting the worldwide epidemic. There’s some controversy about the accuracy of this story. I wrote a book about AIDS with a physician back in the ‘90s. She believed the Patient Zero story....she was one of the first physicians anywhere to set up an AIDS testing clinic in her office.
From WIKIPEDIA: The origin of the term “Patient Zero”
In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, there was a lot of controversy about a so-called Patient Zero who was the basis of a complex transmission scenario compiled by Dr. William Darrow and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the US. This epidemiological study showed how ‘Patient O’ (for “Out of California” and mistakenly identified in the press as ‘Patient Zero’) had given HIV to multiple partners, who then in turn transmitted it to others and rapidly spread the virus to locations all over the world (Auerbach et al., 1984). In all, at least 40 of the 248 people diagnosed with AIDS by April 1982 were thought to have had sex either with him or with someone who had.
A journalist, Randy Shilts, subsequently wrote about Patient Zero — based on Darrow’s findings — in his 1987 book And The Band Played On, which identified Patient Zero as a gay Canadian flight attendant named Gaëtan Dugas (February 20, 1953—March 30, 1984 [1]). For several years, Dugas was vilified as a “mass spreader” of HIV and the original source of the HIV epidemic among gay men. However, four years after the publication of Shilts’s article, Dr. Darrow repudiated his study, admitting that its methods were flawed and claiming that Shilts had misrepresented the study’s conclusions.
[edit] Other Patients Zero
"If you're going to quarantine someone," he continued, "It should be one of those icky poor people whose daddy isn't a rich ambulance chaser like mine."
(1) I'm not sure how the CDC created the problem - are you saying the CDC deliberately infected him as part of some secret program or something?
(2) The article says: While in Europe, health authorities reached him with the news that further tests had revealed his TB was a rare, "extensively drug-resistant" form, far more dangerous than he knew.
The CDC was unaware that he should have been quarantined until the tests were back. His doctor did advise him to push back his travel plans until they knew more.
On Fox now!
He died of AIDS in 1984 after having infected more than one hundred liaisons in LA, NYC, Montreal, SF and Paris.
He was probably not the only major of vector of AIDS in Europe and North America - but he was the source of thousands of the first cases.
What I’m saying is that if he knew he had this form of TB, so did the CDC.
As I stated on an earlier post, it would be nice if he was traveling on business. Alas, I understand he was on his honeymoon (I bet she gets a divorce REAL soon), so the family law firm may be safe from suit. Unfortunatly, while he may be sued, I am betting that people will be going after the airlines (deep pockets). But man, this guy is a real genuine, 100%, ***hole.
“But the other piece is this bacteria is a very deadly bacteria. We just have to err on the side of caution.”
Was watching the local news tonight at 9 out of Phoenix. There is a guy in one of the local hospitals with TB. He has been confined for 9 months in a prison ward/wing. No visitors, no going out. The reason he is there is because he ignored a court order to wear a mask when outside his home. Now he is whining about his confinement, “I screwed up, but this is America” yadda, yadda. My first impressions when seeing him is he appears to be a low end mouthbreather. He is also filing a lawsuit over his confinement. He apparently has supporters. At the other end of the spectrum we have this well educated, well informed lawyer. Neither one of these two seemed to give a S**T if they endangered anyone else. Just what in the hell do people think should be done with people like this? Confine them ‘til cured or dead is just fine by me.
Is there anything you want to say?
Yes, I was wrong. There was something about the way he referred to himself that made me think he was ESL. My apologies.
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