CDC Contacting Others Aboard March 10 FRA-DTW Flight

The Centers for Disease Control is working to contact 17 passengers onboard a Northwest Airlines flight earlier this month, after one of their seatmates was found to have tuberculosis.

Bloomberg reports the passengers were seated near the infected person onboard Flight 51 from Frankfurt to Detroit on March 10.

Customs officials discovered the unidentified man was infected with the mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria upon landing at DTW, and he was taken to a local hospital where he is reportedly responding well to treatment.

"The risk of TB transmission is very low," said CDC spokeswoman Shelly Diaz... but both the Atlanta-based lab and Northwest are taking steps to contain the airborne illness.

"Northwest has been proactively working with the CDC to contact passengers who may be at risk," NWA spokeswoman Leslie Parker said Sunday.

According to the World Health Organization, about a third of the world's population carries the bacteria, though not everyone who is a carrier becomes ill. CDC figures show 13,299 US cases of TB in 2007, the last year figures were available.

One of those persons was Andrew Speaker... who, as ANN reported, was accused of flying from the US to Italy, and back through Canada, knowing he carried with a drug-resistant strain of TB.

Speaker flew to Italy to get married, and was on his honeymoon when informed by his doctors in the US he was infected with XDR-TB bacteria.

FMI: www.cbc.gov, www.nwa.com