Posted on 12/30/2007 7:58:22 AM PST by ricks_place
Health Authorities Check 44 Passengers On Flight From India To Chicago
CHICAGO (STNG) ― Forty-four American Airlines passengers in 17 states -- including Illinois -- are being tracked down for testing after U.S. health authorities learned a woman on a flight from India to Chicago was suffering from a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, officials said Friday.
The 30-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif., woman was diagnosed with the deadly disease in India in August, authorities said. She was a passenger on Flight 293 from Delhi to O'Hare Airport to San Francisco on Dec. 13.
"She certainly knew she had TB," said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the public health officer for Santa Clara County, Calif. "She had symptoms [coughing and fever] when she was on the plane. Was she advised not to travel? I don't know."
The woman, a native of Nepal, went home after her flight landed in San Francisco. But a few days later, she checked in to Stanford Hospital. About 10 people waiting outside the emergency room with the woman also will be tested, Fenstersheib said.
Authorities won't know if the woman infected anyone until 8 to 10 weeks after the flight -- the incubation period for the disease, Fenstersheib said.
With help from the airline, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta identified 44 passengers who were sitting in the woman's row or in the two rows in front of and behind her on the Boeing 777. They're considered the most susceptible to infection during the 16-hour flight, CDC spokeswoman Shelly Diaz said.
None of the passengers lives in Chicago, but several are from other parts of Illinois, authorities here said.
The woman was suffering from multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.
When you have circulated air, everyone is exposed.
Does that include Americans that were infected overseas just trying to get back home? The article seems to indicate that she is a native of Nepal but lives in California. I would venture to guess that she is naturalized and may have been infected during an extended visit with family overseas.
I agree with your statement, but - pending further information - this isn’t the article to prove the point.
This really makes you want to travel.
NOT!!!!!!
What this article probably could argue is tactics used by airlines to combat this from happining in the future.
Or, perhaps personal responsibility to know as much as possible about the disease that you have, and what measures you can take to mitigate the risk of infected others... such as not traveling while displaying symptoms and wearing a face mask when symptoms are not being displayed while in enclosed areas.
infected=infecting
What the heck is she doing in this country?
bump
We don’t yet know the full story, but according to another article mentioned here yesterday, she was being treated for TB in a hospital in India. So she certainly knew she was infected.
In other words, she is a deliberate Typhoid Mary.
Well that is what you did, venture a guess, from an earlier post she is suppose to have a visa, but where she came from is the worlds hot spot for forged passports and visas. I'm sure, considering the state where she is, no one will ever ask and/are check.
Interesting side-bar story:
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/945875/
excerpt:
But because of the huge political, legal and technical challenge of
amassing medical information from multiple nations and then connecting
that in real time to the global transportation system, setting up
a drug-resistant TB screening system is probably impossible, said Dr.
Mario Raviglione, director of the World Health Organization’s
Stop TB Department in Geneva.
“In the majority of situations, you discover the case afterward,
unfortunately,” Raviglione said Thursday.
Consider the case of a Chechen who traveled with his wife and two
children from Beirut, Lebanon, to Paris on a five-hour commercial flight
in October 2006. The man died 10 days later, from a strain of XDR
tuberculosis resistant to nine anti-TB drugs.
The French Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization
searched for 11 passengers sitting near the man, who was coughing and
considered extremely contagious.
But with passengers dispersing to the United States, Panama, Morocco
and other countries, health officials found only seven of them.
Yeah, that’s what I was saying in my second post. The question then is: What is going to happen to her? She should be punished, I think.
True, but the media using the native of Nepal, is a little red flag.
The fact that she lives in California, her identity is not being revealed, and her legal status not being addressed lends to the possibility that she is here on a visa just as much as it lends to her being a stupid foreign born citizen of California with no regard for public health or public health laws.
Colorado Springs Student From Nepal Dies From TB
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/26/america/NA-GEN-US-Colorado-Tuberculosis.php
US state officials report 17 latent cases of TB after Nepalese student dies
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