TB patient Andrew Speaker released from hospital

<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, has returned to an undisclosed location in Georgia but is not at a hospital, said William Allstetter, a spokesman for National Jewish Medical and Research Center.</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 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>

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