Man with rare TB zig-zagged his way around Europe on planes

May 31 2007

Officials in the United States have revealed that the airline passenger infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis fled across Europe to avoid detection.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the man zig-zagged his way by taking flight after flight in order to avoid public health officials.

It seems the traveller jetted around Europe flying from Atlanta to Paris, then on to Athens where he later took a series of flights to a few Greek islands before returning to Athens.

He then boarded a flight to Rome, flew from Rome to Prague and then on to Montreal.

He re-entered the U.S. in a hire car.

The CDC says the patient was placed in isolation after he arrived in the United States because of his behaviour and is not likely to have been highly infectious.

The man apparently has a rare form of TB called extensive drug resistant TB, or XDR TB.

Dr. Martin Cetron, the director of the CDC's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine says his degree of infectiousness is believed to be quite low, but as a precaution the CDC, the World Health Organization and national health authorities in Europe are searching for for 70 to 80 people who sat near him on long, trans-Atlantic flights.

The man who is now being held under a federal isolation order in a hospital near his home in Atlanta, had been told by state health officials he had a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis and was told not to travel.

Concerns over the last few years over the likelihood of an influenza pandemic have meant the CDC has been evaluating its quarantine powers and this case has tested their powers.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza currently circling the world has to date killed 186 people out of 307 infected, and experts believe it could change into a form that transmits easily from one person to another, sparking a pandemic.

Experts have repeatedly pointed out that a person could carry any virus around the world on a single flight and say anyone who is sick should not be allowed on an aircraft.

Dr. Ken Castro, CDC's director of tuberculosis elimination says that is a basic principle for any contagious disease.

The patient has reportedly said he had been to Italy on his honeymoon knowing he had multi-drug resistant TB and had been banned from flying which explains why he took such a circuitous route.

The CDC eventually tracked him down in New York where he agreed to go home to Georgia for treatment.

The man is expected to need prolonged treatment with antibiotics that are approved for other diseases such as pneumonia and leprosy.

French health officials for their part have said the risk of infection was "extremely low" as the patient showed no clinical signs of illness.

They also say there is no scientific evidence that the highly drug-resistant strain was more contagious than other strains.