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Man With Rare TB Easily Eluded Safeguards
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That same day, Eric Benning, the head of the communicable disease branch of the Fulton County health department, met with the patient and his personal physician. Benning said yesterday that he had told the man "it was our recommendation that he not travel because of the potential exposure of other people, but also for his benefit."
Benning said the man mentioned his plans to go to Europe and said he felt well but was willing to take precautions. Benning said he advised the man to wear a mask when in public, confined spaces.
"I didn't ask him specifically if he was going to travel. He said I had not provided him with any compelling reason not to travel," Benning recalled. An article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday quoted the man as saying that local health officials told him they "preferred" he not travel.
On May 22, while the man was still in Europe, tests in Atlanta revealed his TB bacterium was resistant to two classes of backup drugs, qualifying it as "extensively drug-resistant."
The next day, a quarantine officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reached the man in Rome by cellular phone, told him not to travel, and said arrangements for travel and treatment were being made, said Martin Cetron, CDC's head of global migration and quarantine.
Cetron also dispatched a former CDC employee working with Italy's health ministry to visit the man at his hotel and reiterate that message. But by then he was gone.
Although his original plans were to return June 5, he flew from Rome to Prague on May 24 and from Prague to Montreal the same day.
The no-fly list is primarily intended to prevent potential terrorists from boarding flights bound for the United States, but people who pose health risks can be included.
The department does not get real-time passenger data for flights ending in Canada, Knocke said, making it "very difficult for us to know who might be traveling there." It is unknown if the TB patient specifically chose to return via Canada for that reason.
