TWU informer
Veteran
- Nov 4, 2003
- 7,550
- 3,731
Federal health officials continued their 17-state search Sunday for passengers and crew who may have been infected with a rare, potentially deadly form of tuberculosis by a woman on an American Airlines flight from New Delhi to Chicago.
The 30-year-old woman, a native of Nepal who now lives in Sunnyvale, Calif., had been diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis in India, authorities say. She was a passenger on Flight 293 from India to Chicago and flew on to San Francisco on Dec. 13.
Altogether, 44 passengers sat in five rows close enough to the woman that they might have been exposed to her illness. Health authorities recommend that they all undergo testing for tuberclosis, with follow-up in eight to 10 weeks. They're concerned because the woman reportedly was coughing on the plane.
"She was quite sick," says Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "She was at the extreme end of the severity of the disease."
The woman went home after she arrived in San Francisco. About a week later, she checked in to the emergency room at Stanford University Hospital. She was coughing up blood, Cetron says.
The 30-year-old woman, a native of Nepal who now lives in Sunnyvale, Calif., had been diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis in India, authorities say. She was a passenger on Flight 293 from India to Chicago and flew on to San Francisco on Dec. 13.
Altogether, 44 passengers sat in five rows close enough to the woman that they might have been exposed to her illness. Health authorities recommend that they all undergo testing for tuberclosis, with follow-up in eight to 10 weeks. They're concerned because the woman reportedly was coughing on the plane.
"She was quite sick," says Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "She was at the extreme end of the severity of the disease."
The woman went home after she arrived in San Francisco. About a week later, she checked in to the emergency room at Stanford University Hospital. She was coughing up blood, Cetron says.
