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TB patient Andrew Speaker released from hospital

By The Associated Press
Posted 1:30AM on Thursday 26th July 2007 ( 17 years ago )
<p>Andrew Speaker, the tuberculosis patient who sparked an international public health scare in May, was released from National Jewish hospital on Thursday after successfully completing inpatient treatment, hospital officials said.</p><p>Speaker, 31, an Atlanta attorney, left Denver in an air ambulance and is now at an undisclosed location in Georgia to recuperate, said William Allstetter, a spokesman for National Jewish Medical and Research Center.</p><p>Allstetter said Speaker is not in a hospital but he would not provide any other details.</p><p>"He arrived there safely and he is happy to be home," Allstetter said.</p><p>Speaker has multidrug-resistant TB. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially thought he had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, which is much more difficult to treat.</p><p>Speaker will continue antibiotic treatment for about two years, the hospital said.</p><p>The doctors who treated him at National Jewish don't consider him to be completely cured, but a lung operation and antibiotic treatments "have eliminated any detectable evidence of infection," the hospital said.</p><p>He had been at National Jewish since May 31.</p><p>Speaker is not contagious and could have flown by commercial airliner, but "everyone involved in the case" decided the air ambulance was a better choice because of the attention the case has attracted, the hospital said.</p>

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