US TB man faces passenger lawsuit

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A US tuberculosis patient who sparked an international health scare in May by flying is to be sued by fellow passengers who say he put them at risk.

A lawyer in Canada has filed a lawsuit against Andrew Speaker on behalf of nine people, eight of whom were on the same flight via Prague to Montreal.

Mr Speaker says US doctors had told him he was not contagious before his trip.

He has been in isolation since his return but has a less serious form of TB than first thought, doctors say.

Mr Speaker is being treated at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, Colorado.

He was initially diagnosed with extensively-drug-resistant, or X-DR, tuberculosis but further tests have shown he has the multi-drug-resistant strain, which is still severe but is easier to treat.

'Selfish and reckless'

Lawyer Anlac Nguyen, in Montreal, said he had filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven Canadians and two people from the Czech Republic.

Mr Speaker is being treated in isolation at a clinic in Denver

Eight of them took the same flight as Mr Speaker from Prague to Montreal on 24 May and the ninth is the twin brother and flatmate of one of them, Mr Nguyen told the Associated Press news agency.

"They do not have tuberculosis, but nobody can say that they won't have tuberculosis either," Mr Nguyen said. "They continue to suffer now because of the uncertainty."

One of those suing, graduate student Nassim Tabri, said he was still "very stressed out" about the potential risk he had been exposed to by Mr Speaker.

"He deliberately got on this plane, endangered our lives and this is a very selfish and reckless behaviour that deserves to be punished."

Contacted at his hospital in Denver, Mr Speaker said he was concentrating on his recovery rather than the possibility of legal action.

"Right now I want to worry about my treatment and get home," he told AP. "I do hope that no-one contracted this."

'No threat'

Mr Speaker travelled from his hometown of Atlanta to Paris on 12 May to get married and spend his honeymoon in Europe.

The international scare was triggered when, having been contacted in Rome by US health officials who told him to go into isolation there or pay for an air ambulance home, he instead flew with his wife via Prague to Montreal on 24 May.

Mr Speaker continued his journey into the US by car, after being allowed through the border despite an alert being issued to detain him.

Federal and local health officials say he was advised against travelling, although Mr Speaker says he was told he was not contagious or a threat to anyone.

A spokesman for the Public Health Agency of Canada said this week there was no evidence at this point that anyone had contracted TB from Mr Speaker.

TB is rare in the US. Last year there were 13,767 recorded cases or 4.6 cases per 100,000 Americans.