TB traveler shines spotlight on border flaws

updated 12:20 a.m. ET May 31, 2007

WASHINGTON - The government is investigating how a globe-trotting tuberculosis patient drove back into the country even after his name was put on a no-fly list provided to border guards.

The failure exposed a major gap in a system that is supposed to keep the direst of diseases from crossing borders.

But the communications breakdown at a U.S.-Canada border crossing was only one of a series of missed opportunities to catch the Atlanta man and his wife who seemed determined to elude health officials.

And worried infection specialists say it shows how vulnerable the nation is, from outdated quarantine laws and the speed of international flight, to killer germs carried by travelers. What if, they ask, the now-quarantined man had carried not hard-to-spread tuberculosis but something very contagious like the next super-flu?

“It’s regretful that we weren’t able to stop that,” said Dr. Martin Cetron of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said of how the man fled when U.S. health officials tracked him down in Rome and told him not to get on an airplane.

Should the CDC have asked Italian health authorities to put the man in isolation there? That was under discussion when the CDC learned the man had fled, Cetron said.

“We need to rely on people to do the right thing,” Cetron said, saying the CDC hesitates to invoke its quarantine powers. “Can we improve our systems? Absolutely. There will be many lessons learned from this.”

The man has a rare but exceptionally dangerous form of TB, a type that international health authorities are desperate to curb because it is untreatable by most medications. The CDC was a step, or more, behind the man on his six-country odyssey. His name didn’t get on the no-fly list until he apparently already was en route to Canada, Cetron said.

But the CDC did get word to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol before the man and his wife crossed into the country at Champlain, N.Y., a Department of Homeland Security spokesman told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Customs “is reviewing the facts involved with the decision to admit the individuals into the country without isolation,” said DHS spokesman Russ Knocke.

Both Homeland Security’s inspector general and internal affairs officials are investigating, reflecting the seriousness of the case, Knocke said.

Congress is probing, too.

The House Homeland Security Committee has scheduled a June 6 hearing.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the case “shows that something is wrong with the training and supervision of our border agents. We put all this time and effort into identifying those who shouldn’t enter our country, but what good is it if it can be brushed aside by a border guard? I shudder to think that this individual could have been a terrorist.”

Border security isn’t the only issue. While the man now is cooperating with CDC investigators, he remains in federally ordered isolation, in a guarded room in an Atlanta hospital. His identity is being withheld to protect his privacy.

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