ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Federal health authorities are looking for people who may have been exposed aboard a plane to someone infected with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis known as XDR-TB.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that the case involves a U.S. citizen who traveled on two international flights. XDR-TB was recently defined as a subtype of multiple-drug resistant tuberculosis. It can be fatal.
As with all TB, the disease can be spread through the air. "In this case, the infected patient traveled on two trans-Atlantic air flights and, in doing so, may have exposed passengers and crew to XDR-TB," the agency said.
"A federal quarantine order has been issued and CDC is currently collaborating with U.S., state and local health departments, international ministries of health, the airline industry, and WHO (World Health Organization)."
The infected patient traveled to Europe via Air France Flight 385, departing Atlanta on May 12 and arriving in Paris on May 13, the CDC said.
The patient returned to North America last Thursday aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 from Prague, Czech Republic, to Montreal, Canada, then drove into the United States.
"Since May 25, the patient has been hospitalized in respiratory isolation and is undergoing additional medical evaluation," the CDC said.
The patient, who has few symptoms, has radiographic evidence of pulmonary TB and tests positive for XDR-TB, the agency said.
"On the basis of the patient's clinical and laboratory status, and lack of receiving adequate treatment for XDR-TB, this patient was considered potentially infectious at the time of his airline travel, and meets the criteria in the WHO guidelines for initiating an airline contact investigation," it said.
Fellow passengers sought
CDC is recommending crew and passengers seated in the same row or two rows ahead or behind of the patient aboard either flight be evaluated for TB infection.
"This includes initial evaluation and testing with follow-up eight to 10 weeks later for re-evaluation," the CDC said.
But it acknowledged that they are not sure just who is at risk, and recommended anyone aboard the flights be tested. "As there has never been an airline contact investigation for XDR-TB, it is not known if the current recommendations are adequate to determine the possible range and risk of transmission of infection. Because of the serious consequences of XDR-TB and anticipated public concern, in addition to the contacts listed above, all U.S. residents and citizens on these flights should be notified and encouraged to seek TB testing and evaluation."
One in three people in the world is infected with dormant TB bacteria, according to the World Health Organization. Age, immune suppression and other medical conditions can activate the bacteria, which can usually be treated with a course of four standard, or first-line, anti-TB drugs.
But people with XDR-TB are resistant to first- and second-line drugs, and treatment options are limited.
People who are ill with TB of the lungs, the site most commonly affected, can spread the disease by coughing, sneezing or even talking.
"A person needs only to breathe in a small number of these germs to become infected (although only a small proportion of people will become infected with TB disease)," the WHO said in a description on its Web site.
"The risk of becoming infected increases the longer the time that a previously uninfected person spends in the same room as the infectious case," it added.
"The risk of spread increases where there is a high concentration of TB bacteria, such as can occur in closed environments like overcrowded houses, hospitals or prisons. The risk will be further increased if ventilation is poor."
Cure is possible for up to 30 percent of affected people, it added.
Though XDR is rare, WHO estimates that there were almost half a million cases of multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis worldwide in 2004.
People with HIV infection are most at risk of catching TB and becoming sick.
"Anyone who has been in contact with someone known, or suspected of having, XDR-TB should consult their doctor or a local TB clinic and be screened to see if they have TB," the WHO said.
If tuberculosis bacteria are found in the sputum, the diagnosis of TB can be made in a day or two, but this finding will not be able to distinguish between drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB. To evaluate drug susceptibility, the bacteria need to be cultivated and tested in a suitable laboratory.
Final diagnosis for XDR-TB can take six to 16 weeks.
Orignal article posted here.
This is their future: Fascism in full bloom. Confinement.
YES, WEAZL WILL SAY IT: BUSH HAS UNLEASHED THE PLAGUE.
WEAZL WILL MAKE A PREDICTION: LOOK FOR A BREAKOUT TO HAPPEN IN US PRISONS
Friday, April 6th, 2007
Is Sickness a Crime? Arizona Man With TB Locked Up Indefinitely in Solitary Confinement
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27-year-old Robert Daniels is being held against his will in a Phoenix hospital ward reserved for sick prisoners. If state officials have their way, he could be there for the rest of his life. Daniels is suffering from a deadly strain of tuberculosis known as XDR-TB. Doctors say he is virtually untreatable. He has been forced to live in a hospital cell in complete isolation. [includes rush transcript]
Daniels contracted the disease while living in Russia. He returned to the United States last year and agreed to a voluntary quarantine in residential care. But Daniels violated his agreement when he went outside without a mask. Daniels says he misunderstood how much of a health risk he posed, in part because he hadn't been forced to wear a mask in Russia.
Today, Daniels has been forced to live in a hospital cell in complete isolation. His only visitors are medical staff. Sheriff's deputies have taken away his television, radio, phone and computer. He is under 24-hour surveillance and the light in his room is never turned off, even at night. His only contact to the outside world is a pay-phone. Daniels recently described his ordeal in a phone interview with the Arizona radio station KJZZ.
Original report posted here.
AND WEAZL SUSPECTS OTHER BUSH RELEASED, MILITARILY MADE, SUPERBUGS AS WELL (LARGELY IN IRAQ)
The Battle over multiple drug resistant microbes:
MRSA, Acinetobacter, C. Difficile, etc.
"Irresponsible medicine"
Early this year an outbreak of MDR Acinetobacter Baumannii swept over Arizona, 236 cases in just two months. It was reported by the state disease monitoring systems, but ignored on the national level.
Now dubbed "Supergerms", they spread without warning and seemingly without official notices since they are infections instead of diseases. The government is taking advantage of this technicality.
An ICU nurse at Bethesda Naval in Washington DC leaves work feeling under the weather. Within 24 hours she is in a community hospital, intubated, with Acinetobacter Baumannii. It was determined that the bacteria were acquired from a patient at work. She succumbed to the
infection quickly and with no fan fare. The story went silent.
At Brook Army Medical Center in Texas a soldier fights for his life, as his combat wounds are made worse by infections the doctors can't seem to handle. The only reason his story is known is that his civilian girl friend speaks up for him.
This outbreak that is spreading nation wide is largely due to the war in Iraq, and because of a legal technicality in reporting, the military and CDC will not discuss it publicly.
More people come forward, bit by bit, telling stories of how the hospital played down their infection. The one person who could have done something about it, "Rep. Dennis Moore" has walked away from the issue deciding it wasn't worth getting into even after what he had seen
on a visit to Walter Reed.
This silent killer is continuing to spread, and to an indifferent country until it's YOUR turn. These bacteria will grow out of control in the near future as it spreads through neglect.
Every VAMC in this country that had a soldier from Iraq in it is contaminated with MDR AB, as simple as a doorknob or privacy curtain to pass it on. Doctors often work at VA hospitals and community hospitals also.
As long as it doesn't have to be reported it will not be.
You're on your own America, until you say enough is enough.
Focus On Acinetobacter Surveillance
Comments posted March 4th 2006
By September 2004 the Department of Defense had collected 934 positive Acinetobacter Baumannii cultures from 432 persons. This reported from the Navy Environmental Health Center in Bethesda.
On September 21st, 2004 the Armed Forces Epidemiology Board met.
They talked about Acinetobacter Baumannii with 350 colonized soldiers as well as 200 infections.
Yet, the CDC / DOD only announced 102 infection cases in the November 19th, 2004 MWMR report:
85 of the cases were OIF/OEF
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center 33
Walter Reed Army Medical Center 45
U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort 11
National Naval Medical Center 8
Brooke Army Medical Center 5
By August 2005 Forbes reported that at least 280 cases of infection had been reported. The DOD stodgily stood by public statements of 112 infections.
The argument from CHPPM / MEDCOM is that colonized soldiers are a different story from infected soldiers. A colonized soldier however is still a carrier. CHPPM is also trying to say since this is just an infection they don't have to report it like infectious disease. They are not cooperating to provide any updated statistics on it because of a directive at MEDCOM stating they do not want to expose military vulnerabilities publicly.
So its going to take a Congressional Inquiry to CHPPM in order to get a true idea of just how many cases of Acinetobacter Baumannii there are in the military. That and how many are carriers. Spreading this infection from one hospital to another in America.
Here is one example:
A soldier dies in VA care at the James A. Haley Medical Center in Tampa Florida, in December 2004. He had extensive surgery in Iraq and was medivac'd to Landstuhl, Germany, Bethesda MD, and finally JHMC. This was head, chest, and abdomen trauma. After his death it was
determined that he had tested positive twice for the Acinetobacter, which would have changed the clinical outcome if they had treated for it. (Page 22 of IG report)
What about the 7 cases at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii? Why were Chief Warrant Officer 3 Claude Boushey Sr.'s case and others not discussed? That was July 2004.
In other cases, family members cannot get the medical records of their deceased soldiers. Many have died from non-combat injuries that the Pentagon is unwilling to disclose information about even to the parents.
These stall tactics keep anyone but the military from knowing how many died of complications that the Acinetobacter Baumannii contributed too.
More than likely OIF troops walking into any Veteran Affairs Medical Center are possible colonized cases that contaminate that facility.
This is a national threat to public health safety that the Department of Defense has taken a very lax position on. What the public doesn't know wont hurt them, which is certainly not true with a drug resistant bacteria that can be passed with as little as a handshake.
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Superbug hits Canadian soldiers injured in suicide bombing
Thu, 23 Feb 2006
Master Cpl. Paul Franklin of Halifax lost a leg, Cpl. Jeffrey Bailey from Edmonton had devastating head injuries, and Pte. William Salikin of Grand Forks, B.C., also suffered a head injury.
The three soldiers were first taken to a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. When they left a week later, all three men were infected with drug-resistant bacteria.
Medical specialists aren't certain whether most infections started in the battlefield or the hospital. "It's thought that they may have gotten it from going through the hospital in Landstuhl," said Lt.-Col. Henry Flaman, a Canadian military doctor in Edmonton.
Acinetobacter baumannii has become one of the most common sources of infections among American troops wounded in Iraq. The bacteria are found in soil and water in Iraq. When the microbes enter traumatic wounds in the battlefield, the superbug can cause serious damage.
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The Iraq Infection
Forbes Magazine - August 2nd 2005
NEW YORK - Military doctors are fighting to contain an outbreak of a potentially deadly drug-resistant bacteria that apparently originated in the Iraqi soil. So far at least 280 people, mostly soldiers returning from the battlefield, have been infected, a number of whom contracted the illness while in U.S. military hospitals.
Most of the victims are relatively young troops who were injured by the land mines, mortars and suicide bombs that have permeated the Iraq conflict. No active-duty soldiers have died from the infections, but five extremely sick patients who were in the same hospitals as the injured soldiers have died after being infected with the bacteria, Acinetobacter
baumannii.
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Acinetobacter baumannii Infections
Military Medical Facilities
Treating Injured U.S. Service Members, 2002--2004
From January 1, 2002 to August 31, 2004, military health officials identified 102 patients with blood cultures of Acinetobacter baumannii at military medical facilities treating service members injured in Afghanistan and the Iraq/Kuwait region.
Most of the infections were reported from
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany
33 patients: 32 OIF/OEF casualties, one non-OIF/OEF, and Walter
Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), District of Columbia
45 patients: 29 OIF/OEF casualties, 16 non-OIF/OEF.
The Acinetobacter Baumanii strain was isolated to the soil in Iraq, and enters through dirty battle field wounds or serious infections (Pneumonia ). The British Health Protection Agency was the first to publicly identify this in March 2003, and DOD waited till November 2004
to recognize it after the CDC posted the findings of the 102 cases.
Cases of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis at Walter Reed Army Hospital also showed up with Acinetobacter Baumannii. One person from there wants to meet others who were there to share stories.
Original article posted here.
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