Travelers On Edge Following TB Scare

Tuesday, May 29th 2007, 8:16 pm

By: News On 6

A rare case of tuberculosis has many travelers on edge. The Centers for Disease Control has issued a warning to people who flew on certain international flights earlier this month. News On 6 anchor Jennifer Lore reports a U.S. citizen on those flights was diagnosed with a highly dangerous form of TB, and could have spread it to other passengers.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that, so far, has been fairly easy to treat. Dr. Addison Beeson is trained to recognize TB; she says she's only seen about one case in Tulsa in the past ten years. But she says, nationally, TB cases are on the rise.

"Tuberculosis has been around a long time. Itâ€™s been treated fairly effectively until just recent years when all of the sudden we've developed a lot of multi-drug resistant strains," Dr. Addison Beeson said.

And that is exactly what the Centers for Disease Control are up against now.

"What is unusual about this circumstance is that the patient's tuberculosis organism was extremely resistant to the TB drugs that we would normally use to treat infection," CDC Director Julie Gerberding said.

Itâ€™s called XDR-TB, extensively drug resistant Tuberculosis. A U.S. citizen tested positive for the disease prompting the first Federal Order of Isolation, or quarantine, since 1963.

"We felt it was our responsibility to air on side, the abundant side, of caution and issue the isolation order to ensure that we were doing everything possible to protect people's health," said Gerberding.

The CDC is also looking for anyone who may have been on the same planes as their patient, so they can be tested. Those travelers would have been on Air France flight 385 from Atlanta to Paris on May 12th, then on the May 24th return flight from Prague to Montreal, Canada aboard Czech Air Flight 104. But Dr. Beeson says no one should panic because the risk of transmitting diseases on airplanes is actually fairly low.

"The newer commercial airlines have hepa filters and so the air is circulated about 20-30 times per minute which is even more than a hospital isolation room,â€ Beeson said. â€œAnd so because of that the risk is a little bit lower, so there's usually not much risk except for the travelers in the contiguous area."

A representative of the CDC said they have not determined the identities of all the passengers who are at high risk of contracting the disease. The Tulsa City County health department and the State Health Department said they had not been alerted of any Oklahomans aboard the flights in question.

For more information on this incident, click here.

Watch the video: Recent TB Scare Leaving Travelers Uneasy