aviation
Update on Quarantined Tuberculosis Traveler
Filed in archive Aviation News by Terah Shelton on May 30, 2007
Update on Quarantined Tuberculosis Traveler
Here's the latest on the quarantined tuberculosis traveler:

1. The still unidentified man knew he had tuberculosis and flew anyway.
2. Doctors advised him not to travel, but didn't demand it.
3. The man was traveling from Atlanta to Paris to get married in Greece.
3. His wife and close family members have tested negative for the rare form of TB
4. He returned to home because he believed he would die without treatment in the U.S.
5. Officials are investigating how he was able to cross back into the U.S. from Canada despite being on the no-fly list given by border guards.

But the communications breakdown at a U.S.-Canada border crossing was only one of a series of missed opportunities to catch the Atlanta man and his wife who seemed determined to elude health officials.

And worried infection specialists say it shows how vulnerable the nation is, from outdated quarantine laws and the speed of international flight, to killer germs carried by travelers. What if, they ask, the now-quarantined man had carried not hard-to-spread tuberculosis but something very contagious like the next super-flu?

"It's regretful that we weren't able to stop that," said Dr. Martin Cetron of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said of how the man fled when U.S. health officials tracked him down in Rome and told him not to get on an airplane.

Should the CDC have asked Italian health authorities to put the man in isolation there? That was under discussion when the CDC learned the man had fled, Cetron said.

"We need to rely on people to do the right thing," Cetron said, saying the CDC hesitates to invoke its quarantine powers. "Can we improve our systems? Absolutely. There will be many lessons learned from this."

The man has a rare but exceptionally dangerous form of TB, a type that international health authorities are desperate to curb because it is untreatable by most medications. The CDC was a step, or more, behind the man on his six-country Odyssey. His name didn't get on the no-fly list until he apparently already was en route to Canada, Cetron said.

But the CDC did get word to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol before the man and his wife crossed into the country at Champlain, N.Y., a Department of Homeland Security spokesman told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Read the rest of the story here.

Permalink: Update on Quarantined Tuberculosis Traveler
Tags: Quarantined  Man  tuberculosis  aviation  quarantined  quarantined+tuberculosis  tuberculosis+traveler  upd 
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