One Indian among Dragon Air passengers flown with tuberculosis patient

Taipei: Taiwan health authorities on Thursday were continuing to trace a tuberculosis patient from Taiwan and the passengers he may have infected on flights between Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Hong Kong and China.
"We have not found Mr Lee yet, but we have founded his relatives in Nanjing and told them to tell Lee that he should seek treatment in China or Taiwan," Chou Wen-hau, deputy director of Taiwan's Centre for Disease Control (CDC), told reporters.
Chou said CDC had learned that 276 passengers and 11 crew were on board Dragon Air flight KA435, which Lee and his wife took from the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung to Hong Kong on July 21.
The passengers include 270 Taiwanese and six foreigners, three of whom were Dutch, one Indian, one from the United States and one Japanese.
"We have notified the health authorities of their respective countries to monitor their situation," he said.
The CDC has also notified the World Health Organization as well as Chinese and Hong Kong health authorities, and Taiwan will send doctors to China to send Lee to hospital or to take him back to seek treatment in Taiwan.
The CDC has received dozens of inquiry phone calls from the Taiwanese who took KA435 from Kaohsiung to Hong Kong and is trying to trace the 123 passengers and 12 crew on flight KA810 with the same airline, which Lee and his wife took on July 21 from Hong Kong to Nanjing.
The 55-year-old Lee was diagnosed with a drug-resistant form of TB in 2003 and has been told by doctors not to take flights.
Lee has not been taking medication properly and has infected his wife, who has been ordered not to take flights longer than eight hours.
27/07/07 DPA/China Post, Taiwan

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Categories: Foreign Jul 2007