TB Sufferer Flew to Europe to Get Married

A US man who potentially put dozens of air passengers at risk by boarding transatlantic flights knowing he was infected with a dangerous form of tuberculosis said today that he had traveled to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon.

The unnamed patient - currently in hospital isolation in Georgia after becoming the first person quarantined in the US by the government for more than 40 years - insisted health officials were aware of his plans.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), part of the US department of health and human services, is trying to contact passengers, many thought to be European, who were on the two flights with the man.

A spokesman said: "CDC is collaborating with US state and local health departments, international ministries of health, the airline industry and the World Health Organization regarding appropriate notification and follow-up of passengers and crew potentially at risk of exposure."

Before leaving for Europe, the man was diagnosed as having XDR-TB, a highly drug-resistant strain of the potentially fatal illness.

In an interview with a US newspaper, the man, who asked not to be named, insisted he had not been stopped from traveling to Greece for his wedding and only knew about the problem when CDC officials contacted him in Italy during his honeymoon.

On being told he would have to submit himself to indefinite treatment in isolation in Italy, the man said, he panicked and traveled back home via Canada so as to avoid a no-fly notice placed on his passport by US officials.

"I didn't want to put anybody at risk," the Georgia-based man told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We just wanted to come home and get treatment."

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he added. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary confinement in Italy thing."

XDR-TB is very rare, with two US cases last year, but it occurs so infrequently that officials are unsure who needs to be checked.

The man first flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France flight 385. He returned to Canada on May 24 aboard Czech Air flight 104 from Prague to Montreal. After driving into the US, he voluntarily went to a New York hospital and was flown by the CDC to Atlanta.

At a press conference last night, the CDC director, Julie Gerberding, said the agency had issued a federal public health isolation order against the man, allowing him to be held against his will so as to protect the public. The last such isolation order was in 1963 over a smallpox case, she said.

While tests showed the man was at extremely low risk of transmitting the disease, Ms Gerberding said the CDC was urging passengers who sat in nearby seats and rows to get precautionary TB tests.

In his interview, the man insisted he had never suffered any symptoms and was not coughing during the flights.

He said he had met local health officials regularly since being diagnosed with the disease in January after a chest X-ray for another ailment.

Officials knew about his upcoming wedding and said only that they "preferred" he did not travel, the man told the Journal-Constitution.

"The county health department knew I was going over to have a honeymoon. We had a meeting before I left," he said.

When he was contacted while in Italy, a CDC official told the man he should hand himself in to Italian health authorities immediately and agree to go into isolation.

He said: "I thought to myself: 'You're nuts.' I wasn't going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged."

The TB rate in the US has been falling for years because of the effectiveness of antibiotics.

Last year, it hit a record low of 13,767 cases. In 2004, 14.6 million people around the world had active TB and there were 8.9 million new cases and 1.7 million deaths, mostly in developing countries.