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Airline Says It Handed TB Traveller Over to Health Officials at Montreal Airport

Posted on: Wednesday, 30 May 2007, 15:00 CDT

TORONTO (CP) - The airline that transported a man infected with an extremely dangerous form of tuberculosis from Europe last week says it handed him over to local health authorities when the plane arrived in Montreal.

But officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada are disputing the claim, saying there is no record the pilot notified quarantine services that they should meet the plane when it arrived from Prague.

A statement from Czech Airlines says the company learned five hours after Flight 0104 left the Czech capital that they had a passenger onboard who was believed to be infected with extensively drug resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB as it is often called.

The airline says it notified both Canadian and U.S. health authorities and handed the man over to local health authorities when the plane arrived at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Officials of the airline were not immediately available to answer questions about the statement.

Dr. Howard Njoo, director of emergency preparedness at the public health agency, disputes the claim that authorities were notified as well, saying the first Canadian officials learned of the incident was when they were informed of it by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control the day after the flight arrived.

Public health authorities around the globe are extremely concerned about the rise of XDR-TB, a form of the disease that is fatal in roughly 50 per cent of regular cases and 90 per cent of cases where the person is also infected with HIV-AIDS.

The unidentified man, a U.S. citizen, disputes the claims of U.S. authorities that he was told he should not travel to Europe earlier this month for a planned wedding and extended honeymoon.

The man flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 on Air France, then flew on to Athens, Rome and Prague before returning to North America.

He admits in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he flew back via Canada to evade a U.S. no-fly order that had been issued to prevent him from taking a long-haul flight.

Source: Canadian Press

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