TB Patient Moved to Specialized Hospital

The man infected with a dangerous and hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis, who potentially exposed several hundred airline passengers to the disease, was moved early today from a hospital in Atlanta to one in Denver that specializes in treating respiratory illnesses.
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George Kochaniec Jr./Rocky Mountain News via Associated Press

Medical personnel unload equipment off a plane at Centennial Airport in Colorado, after it arrived with the unidentified man from Atlanta diagnosed with tuberculosis.
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The man, identified as Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old lawyer from Atlanta, was escorted by federal marshals as he walked under his own power from an ambulance to National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.

He was wearing a mask to prevent transmission of the disease, as were the marshals escorting him.

William Allstetter, a spokesman for National Jewish, said Mr. Speaker would be placed in a negative-pressure hospital room to prevent the spread of germs while he undergoes diagnostic tests and antibiotic therapy. He is likely to undergo treatment for “weeks to months,” Mr. Allstetter said, because of the difficulty of dealing with the “excessively drug-resistant” strain of the disease.

Mr. Speaker was the first patient to be placed in forced isolation by federal public health authorities in more than 40 years. He was isolated after he traveled to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon despite being advised that he had the disease. Health authorities said he posed a risk to airplane passengers, particularly on long trans-Atlantic flights.

Mr. Speaker has said that he was advised not to travel but was not specifically forbidden to do so. The wedding and honeymoon had apparently been planned for a long time.

He apparently has no symptoms of the disease. Mr. Allstetter said he asked Mr. Speaker how he felt on arriving at the Denver hospital about 7:45 a.m. mountain time, and he replied that he felt fine. “He looked fine,” Mr. Allstetter said.

Meanwhile, public health officials are trying to locate the passengers that sat closest to Mr. Speaker on the trans-Atlantic flights, who are said to be at the most risk for infection. They will be asked to undergo testing for presence of the disease.

Doctors have said
Mr. Speaker’s wife, who accompanied him on the private flight to Denver, apparently has not been infected.

Officials of the federal Centers for Disease Control said they contacted Mr. Speaker while he was on vacation in Italy after they learned that he carried the dangerous strain of the disease, and advised him to turn himself in to Italian health authorities.

Instead, he made his way to Prague, flew from there to Montreal, and then drove across the border into New York, to avoid being stranded outside the country by his name appearing on a United States no-fly list. Once in New York City, he was persuaded to go to a hospital, and has been cooperating with federal health
authorities since then.
source:www.nytimes.com