A man flew back and forth on commercial flights across the Atlantic before landing in an isolation ward, diagnosed with a particularly virulent and drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. The case is so serious that the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Julie Gerberding, announced the matter herself, and issued a federal quarantine order.
Interesting facts from the New York Times story:
Tuberculosis kills about 1.6 million people each year worldwide…. At any given time, one person in three worldwide is infected with dormant tuberculosis germs, according to the World Health Organization. People become ill when the bacteria become active, usually when a person’s immunity declines, whether because of advancing age, HIV infection or some other medical problem.
That’s why we called it “the Patient Predator.” For more, read this terrifying essay by Kevin Patterson in Mother Jones. He writes:
Tuberculosis infection has been so prevalent that for most of human history it was an almost normal, if often lethal, part of the human bio-niche…. The most devastating infection in the world is not Ebola or Lyme disease, West Nile virus or even HIV, but tuberculosis.