A 30-year-old Sunnyvale woman, recently back from a stay in India, is in an isolation unit at Stanford Hospital with a tough-to-treat strain of tuberculosis, and health officials are scrambling to find any people with whom she may have come into close contact.

The woman, whose name has not been released, was reportedly diagnosed with multidrug-resistant TB while in India and was being treated for the disease before she returned to the Bay Area on Dec. 13.

“She was sick when she got on her airplane,” said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for Santa Clara County’s Public Health Department.

The authorities have finally seen fit to release specifics on her flight and whereabouts:

County health officials, along with the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are tracking down people who might have been exposed to the disease. The people who shared the emergency room with the woman on Dec. 19 already have
been notified, as has her family, Fenstersheib said.

The CDC has identified 44 people from 16 states who were within two rows of the woman on American Airlines Flight 293 from New Delhi to Chicago’s O’Hare airport on Dec. 13. On Thursday, the CDC sent health officials in the 16 states a list of the names and asked for help in having them tested for TB.

This woman’s selfishness and recklessness cannot be understated. Let me repeat the second paragraph of the story:

The woman, whose name has not been released, was reportedly diagnosed with multidrug-resistant TB while in India and was being treated for the disease before she returned to the Bay Area on Dec. 13.

She knew what she had before she got on the plane. She exposed other people to the TB. She didn’t bother to tell anyone.

Rotten. Just rotten.

She deserves to be named and shamed so that other idiots can be deterred.

Looks like we still haven’t learned anything (via SJMercNews):

A Santa Clara County resident infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis flew back to the United States earlier this month without alerting authorities of her illness – potentially threatening fellow passengers and people at Stanford Hospital’s emergency room with whom she came into contact.

Now public health officials are trying to alert those who may be at risk.

The 30-year-old woman, who went to Stanford Hospital several days after arriving back in the Bay Area and who is now being treated in isolation there, is infected with multi-drug resistant TB. That form of the bacterial disease is emerging as a significant global public health problem because it is difficult and expensive to treat and has a higher mortality rate than conventional TB.

Just seven months after Atlanta personal-injury lawyer Andrew Speaker came under intense public fire for traveling to Europe while knowingly infected with drug-resistant TB, Santa Clara public health officers and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating how a woman who had been diagnosed with an active case of TB while abroad was able to easily step foot on an international flight.

The CDC, county health authorities and Stanford Hospital officials have been informing passengers who sat within two rows of the woman on the flight. In addition, a handful of patients, visitors and staff who were in the Stanford emergency room at the same time as the woman were told they might be in danger of getting the respiratory illness and were urged to undergo testing immediately and again in several months.
Citing federal patient confidentiality rules, health authorities would not name the infected woman or the country she was visiting. A CDC spokeswoman said the agency was not yet ready to disclose the airline and flight she was on, where her flight originated or even what day she landed in San Francisco.

That’s right: They won’t tell the public the woman’s name, the airline and flight she was on, where the flight came from, or when she landed.

So, they’ve succeeded in scaring the bejeesus out of a large population of the flying public without giving them any specific information to make proper risk assessments.

Thanks, DHS, TSA, and CDC.

Your hard-earned tax dollars at work again.

Let’s hope it gets off the ground.

A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the last year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.

The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency was warned by health officials on April 16 that the frequent traveler was infected, but it took the Homeland Security officials more than six weeks to issue a May 31 alert to warn its own border inspectors, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Homeland Security took one more week to tell its own Transportation Security Agency.

Excellent work uncovering this latest travesty, ladies.

But be careful. You know you’re not allowed to write about TB and open borders.

Someone might threaten to spit on you.

A congressional investigation into officials’ inability to stop a tuberculosis patient from leaving the country found significant security gaps, heightening concern about vulnerability to potential cases of pandemic flu or smallpox.

A report on the May incident involving an Atlanta lawyer who caused an international health scare found that the Centers for Disease Control lacks a sound way to prevent someone infected with a biological agent from entering or leaving the United States.

The review by the House Homeland Security Committee’s Democratic staff was to be released Monday, one day before the sixth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks against the U.S.

Since the Sept. 11 strikes, the government has focused on all types of possible threats and sought to find ways to best detect and counter biological agents.

“How we address these gaps now will serve as a direct predictor of how well we will handle future events, especially those involving emerging, re-emerging, and pandemic infectious diseases,” according to the report obtained by The Associated Press.

The committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., added: “If we can’t counter TB, how can we counter terrorism.”

Good point.

“If we can’t counter TB, how can we counter terrorism?”

Now, just try and ask the same question about illegal immigration and tuberculosis.

Watch out for the spit.

Yes, really. It happens all the time. That misplaced trust is why we have hundreds of thousands of deportation fugitives on the loose today. The “notice to appear” letter that the article mentions here is known in open-borders circles as a “run letter.” As in: Don’t actually do what the letter orders you to do. Just run!

For crying out loud:

The Mexican day laborer jailed in Gwinnett County for refusing tuberculosis treatment could be released by the end of this week, health officials said Tuesday.

But even though Francisco Santos would no longer be contagious, the 17-year-old would still not be cured — and he would not be a completely free man.

Santos will be handed over to the custody of his mother, and both have signed a legally binding consent order saying he will comply with nine months of treatment and not leave the area.

In addition, when Santos leaves the Gwinnett County jail, federal immigration officials say they will hand him a notice to appear in court for deportation.

Remember: Santos was going to ignore health officials and walk out the door. Now, they’re just going to “hope and pray” that he does what he asked them to do. Loco:

Gwinnett health officials jailed Santos Aug. 24 after he refused treatment for an active, contagious case of tuberculosis and threatened to flee to his native Mexico. Santos, who lives in Duluth, quickly started treatment. The events brought to mind the recent case of Andrew Speaker, the Atlanta lawyer who traveled abroad with tuberculosis and was held in isolation when he returned.

Santos’ signing of the consent order prompted health officials to cancel a court hearing planned for today on his confinement.

Santos’ mother, who declined to comment Tuesday, has also been slated for deportation as an illegal immigrant, Rocha said. Enriqueta Palacios and her son are expected to appear before an immigration judge in Atlanta within a few weeks. Those proceedings can take a few months, and, pending appeals and other actions, the final deportation could come soon after that or take several more months.

In total, he may not be deported for another two years, which would provide him time to receive the treatment locally.

Gwinnett health officials say they have stressed to Santos and his mother that leaving the area and neglecting his treatment could injure him, his family and the public. He would become a fugitive and he could become contagious again.

“They’ve given every indication that they understand … and they’ve given no clues that they intend to do anything but accept the treatment and we hope and pray that’s what they adhere to,” said county health spokesman Vernon Goins.

Four other members of Santos’s family tested positive for TB.

When doctors told Francisco Santos he had tuberculosis Friday, health officials said the Gwinnett County 17-year-old refused to believe it.

Then the wiry, dark-haired youth refused to submit to any treatment. Worse, he said he was walking out of the Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville and heading back to his home country of Mexico, officials said.

“I think he was scared,” said David Will, attorney for the Gwinnett County Board of Health.

Gwinnett health officials found themselves in a bind. They had a person with a case of active, contagious tuberculosis, refusing treatment and threatening to carry the disease to a foreign country.

They also were aware of the recent incident involving Atlanta lawyer Andrew Speaker, who also has tuberculosis. After Speaker left for his wedding in Greece, a national news conference set off an international health scare.

In this case, the Gwinnett officials acted decisively: They put Santos in jail Friday evening, in a rare act of a government agency confining a sick person. Santos is the only inmate in a special medical isolation cell designed for inmates with contagious conditions. The cell, which measures about 15 feet by 20 feet, has a special ventilation system that keeps the air from reaching other inmates.

More about his, you know, irrelevant immigration status:

Santos listed his birth place as Mexico. Will said he did not know the status of Santos’ citizenship. The Gwinnett jail has two federal immigration agents who screen foreign-born inmates to determine whether to investigate their status and potentially place a hold on them for deportation.

As early as Monday, Gwinnett health officials expect to speak publicly about the extent of Santos’ disease and his treatment.

Right now, it remains unclear how long his confinement may go on. If he starts cooperating and obtaining treatment, he could be moved to a hospital and, when he is no longer contagious, sent home for further treatment. But if he continues his denials, the judge may commit him to a hospital with security for treatment, Will said.

See here for a medical journal article on the rise of TB among children in San Diego County.

And see here for a CDC paper on tuberculosis and immigrants in the US.

One more: Heather Mac Donald compares and contrasts the public health response to asbestos vs. TB.

So be it.

Take a look at the latest case in Greenville, S.C.:

The number of workers exposed to tuberculosis at a Greenville, S.C., chicken plant has grown to 131, but state health officials cautioned Tuesday only one is suspected of having an active form of the infectious disease.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control began testing employees at the House of Raeford Farms plant late last month after the agency was told about the infected worker. So far, 286 employees who have been in contact with the worker have been tested.

The percentage of positive cases is believed to be high because many of the plant’s employees come from other countries where the disease may be more prevalent, said agency spokesman Thom Berry.

Translation: Illegal aliens. Or, as President Bush calls them, “newcomers.” Or, as Harry Reid calls them, “undocumented Americans.” Whatever you call them, they are people who have not been screened for infectious disease before entering the country. The Charlotte Observer reports that “more than 60 percent of line workers in the chicken industry are Hispanic. And experts say most of the workers probably entered the U.S. already infected.”

While not considered an immediate threat to Greenville residents, the number of infected workers reflects a concern about a growing health threat: immigrants increasingly carrying TB to the U.S.

“It’s become more of an imported disease,” said Dr. Jason Stout, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University who serves as one of North Carolina’s tuberculosis consultants.

House of Raeford employs about 650 workers at its Greenville plant who process chicken for stores and fast-food restaurants. Many of the workers live in small neighborhoods surrounding the plant.

Foreign-born residents accounted for 55 percent of TB cases nationwide in 2005 — the last year for which statistics were available. The greatest number of foreign born cases, 25 percent, or 1,942 cases, came from Mexico, followed by the Philippines, Vietnam, and India. In 1993, foreign-born residents made up 29 percent of reported TB cases.

Every year, thousands of illegal immigrants come to the Carolinas to work in poultry, construction and other industries. But undocumented workers are not the only ones entering the United States without being tested for TB. While refugees receive the tests, many immigrants traveling on tourist, business and student visas do not, according to experts.

“That is a major problem,” said Carol Pozsik, CEO of the National TB Controllers Association…

But not, apparently, worth the tabloid headlines and nightly updates that TB carrier Andrew Speaker received.

Update: A strange new twist…Speaker’s father-in-law is a CDC microbiologist who specializes in TB.

***

Related: What’s that I hear? The sound of ACLU lawyers on the way.

Related: The government is investigating how Speaker got across the border:

The government is investigating how a globe-trotting tuberculosis patient drove back into the country even after his name was put on a no-fly list provided to border guards. The failure exposed a major gap in a system that is supposed to keep the direst of diseases from crossing borders.

But the communications breakdown at a U.S.-Canada border crossing was only one of a series of missed opportunities to catch the Atlanta man and his wife who seemed determined to elude health officials.

And worried infection specialists say it shows how vulnerable the nation is, from outdated quarantine laws and the speed of international flight, to killer germs carried by travelers. What if, they ask, the now-quarantined man had carried not hard-to-spread tuberculosis but something very contagious like the next super-flu?

“It’s regretful that we weren’t able to stop that,” said Dr. Martin Cetron of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said of how the man fled when U.S. health officials tracked him down in Rome and told him not to get on an airplane.

Should the CDC have asked Italian health authorities to put the man in isolation there? That was under discussion when the CDC learned the man had fled, Cetron said.

“We need to rely on people to do the right thing,” Cetron said, saying the CDC hesitates to invoke its quarantine powers. “Can we improve our systems? Absolutely. There will be many lessons learned from this.”

We’ll see.

***

Previous:

What good is a no-fly list…

An Atlanta-area man — infected with a rare, potentially deadly type of tuberculosis — is under federal quarantine at Grady Memorial Hospital with an armed sheriff’s deputy outside his door following his odyssey on international flights, including some to smuggle himself back into the country.

The globe-trotting tale of the man, his fiancee, their wedding and honeymoon abroad — and conflicting recollections of what he was told about his disease and whether he could travel — culminated Tuesday with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issuing an international health alert.

The CDC is working with airlines to contact passengers who took two transatlantic flights — a May 12 Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris and a May 24 Czech Air flight from Prague to Montreal — to alert them that they may have been exposed to extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis…

…The man says he and his bride were in Rome on their honeymoon when they got a message to call the CDC. The CDC official said that they needed to cancel their trip and return home and that the CDC would call the next day with travel information. The patient says he and his wife canceled plans to move on to Florence the next day as they awaited the CDC’s instructions.

The next day, instead of giving the couple travel arrangements, the man said a CDC staff member told him he’d need to turn himself into Italian health authorities the next morning and agree to go into isolation and treatment in that country for an indefinite period of time.

“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 man said.

The man said the CDC told him he could not fly aboard a commercial airliner with his disease. “We asked about the CDC jet and they said no, there wasn’t funding in the budget to use the jet,” he said.

Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Cetron told The Associated Press: “He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back.”

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency was considering sending the CDC’s jet to Italy to retrieve the man — when he disappeared and didn’t meet Italian health authorities.

“We’re sitting in a hotel room in Italy and we’re looking at each other and we’re on our honeymoon and the authorities are coming in hours,” the man recalled. They made the decision to run.

To evade the no-fly list, which they assumed only involved jets bound for the United States, the man and wife flew into Canada and drove a car into the U.S. At every check of their passports, he said they feared being caught, but weren’t.

Homeland security? What homeland security?

***

Reader P. writes: “The real question is: what good is a no-fly list, when all that’s needed to avoid it is to fly into Canada and DRIVE ACROSS THE BORDER INTO THE UNITED STATES?”

A social worker tracked down the illegal alien’s friends and family. They all tested positive for TB and, get this, were all working “behind the scenes” in local restaurants. How appetizing. No word on whether the illegal workers’ employers or local public health officials were informed.

The neurosurgeon’s patient ended up at Greenwich Hospital “because the one in the town where he’d settled, the neighboring and much less well-to-do Port Chester, had shut down after going bankrupt. That hospital had cared for a large number of patients just like him: no insurance, no English, no papers.” Sound familiar?

After racking up $200,000 in hospital costs, the patient was released. I’ll quote the end of the piece without comment:

I thought I’d never see this young man again, but I was wrong. Six months after surgery, he walked into my office. Walked in. No wheelchair, no walker, no cane, not even a limp. Not only that, he told me (through a translator) that he was looking for a new job. I thought about all the American workers I’d operated on, for far less serious problems, who were quick to bring in disability paperwork after surgery, hoping I’d deem them permanently disabled, unfit for any line of work. And at that moment, the resentment I’d felt six months earlier was replaced by something quite different–admiration.

Okay, I know I just typed that I wouldn’t comment. But crikey–what is it with the open-borders WSJ editorial page and McCainiacs never missing an opportunity to smear Americans as lazy do-nothings?

If columns like this one are intended to bring readers around to the Journal’s pro-illegal alien amnesty views, the editors (like the illegal alien march organizers) are more galactically out of touch than I ever imagined.

***

Background:

TB or not TB?
JAMA TB study

Contagious diseases are entering the United States because of immigrants, illegal aliens, refugees and travelers, and World Health Organization officials say the worst could be yet to come.

In addition to a list of imported diseases that includes tuberculosis, sickle cell anemia, hepatitis B, measles and the potentially deadly parasitic disease Chagas, officials fear what could happen if the avian flu, which is flourishing among poultry in Southeast Asia, mutates so that it is capable of human-to-human transmission through casual contact…

More on the TB/Hmong angle here, here, and here.

Canada has a problem, too.