Stubborn TB Patient Placed in Lockdown

Arizona health authorities have jailed a man infected by an extremely lethal strain of tuberculosis, setting off a debate about the balance between civil liberties and public health.

Robert Daniels, 27, was locked up after refusing doctors' orders to wear a mask in public. The disease he carries -- extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB -- threw the global TB community into a literal state of emergency after an outbreak last year in South Africa. Some forms of XDR-TB are untreatable.

“I’m being treated worse than an inmate,” Daniels said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press last month. “I’m all alone. Four walls. Even the door to my room has been locked. I haven’t seen my reflection in months.”

Though Daniels’ confinement is extremely rare, health experts say it is a situation that U.S. public health officials may have to confront more and more because of the spread of drug-resistant TB and the emergence of diseases such as SARS and avian flu in this increasingly interconnected world.

“Even though the rate of TB in the U.S. is at the lowest ever this last year, we live in a globalized world where, if anything emerges anywhere, it could come to our country right away,” said Mark Harrington, executive director of the Treatment Action Group, an American advocacy group.

Man locked up indefinitely, sparking civil liberties debate [Associated Press]

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