America
Indian woman with drug-resistant TB sets off scare in US
By
By Arul Louis New York, June 10
An Indian woman infected
with a rare drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis has created a health
scare in three US states and for people on her flight and is now being
treated in a special isolation facility near Washington, health
officials said on Tuesday.
The woman with extensively
drug-resistant TB (XDR TB) travelled from India to Chicago and the
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that as a
precautionary measure it will be contacting people who may have come
into contact with her on the plane.
The woman has not been identified in keeping with the patient privacy regulations.
Asked
about the flight, CDC spokesperson Tom Skinner told IANS that the
information was not available. "We likely wouldn't provide that to you
even if we had it," he added. "We are able to get flight manifest and
reach those who need to be reached. If for some reason we couldn't get
flight manifest and we needed to reach people by going public with
flight number we would."
Information about where she was from India was also not available.
CDC
said, "The risk of getting a contagious disease on an airplane is
low,a¿ but public health officials sometimes need to alert travellers
who may have been exposed to a sick passenger.
The woman, who
arrived at Chicago's O'Hare airport in April, visited Missouri and
Tennessee before seeking medical treatment seven weeks after coming to
the US, CDC said.
CDC said it is now working with the Illinois state Department of Health to identify people she may have been in contact with.
Based
on her medical history and molecular testing, she was diagnosed with
XDR TB, CDC said. She was placed in respiratory isolation at a suburban
Chicago hospital and later transported by air ambulance to the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Maryland, near
Washington.
The National Institutes of Health said patient was in
a "stable condition" at NIH Clinical Center in an isolation room in the
specially designed for handling patients with respiratory infections
like XDR TB.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) is treating the patient under a NIH clinical protocol
for treating TB, including XDR TB, NIH said.
XDR TB is a rare
type of TB that is resistant to nearly all medicines used to treat the
disease. (Technically, the CDC describes it as "resistant to isoniazid
and rifampin, plus any fluoroquinolone and at least one of three
injectable second-line drugs, that is, amikacin, kanamycin, or
capreomycin".
Can XDR TB be treated and cured? Yes, in some
cases. Some programmes have shown that cure is possible for an estimated
30 percent to 50 percent of those affected. Successful treatment
depends greatly on the extent of the drug resistance, the severity of
the disease, whether the patient's immune system is weakened, and
adherence to treatment, CDC says.
In some cases, doctors may also resort to surgery to deal with XDR TB.
What
should I do if I have been around someone who has XDR TB? CDC avises
that you contact your doctor or local health department about getting a
TB skin test or blood test for TB infection. Tell the doctor or nurse
when you spent time with this person and where the person with XDR TB is
being treated.