Air Travel by TB Patients Poses No Public Health Risks

Commercial air travel presents people with the tenuous possibility of contracting illnesses from fellow passengers. When you fly you are, after all, stuck with a large group of people in a confined space. Remember when Vice President Joe Biden cautioned people against air and rail travel during the height of the H1N1 outbreak? His remarks were considered just another Biden gaffe, but they also weren't entirely unreasonable, which is why airlines took so many precautions during that period, like getting rid of blankets and pillows to avoid transmitting the disease.

But there are other conditions that don't pose much of a health risk to air passengers, and new research suggests that tuberculosis is one of them. A new edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases finds that despite current regulations governing TB patients and air travel, there is actually little risk that the disease can be transmitted to others during flights. A group led by Dr. Ibrahim Abubakar studied more than 4,000 international air passengers from 13 different studies and found that most of the studies showed no proof of TB transmission during air travel. Abubakar concluded: ""Although an airline cabin is a closed confined space, the cumulative duration of exposure is relatively short compared with households or…other modes of transport where individuals might travel on the same route daily."

These findings are consistent with this World Health Organization statement on TB and air travel: "To date, no case of active TB has been identified as a result of exposure on a commercial aircraft. The quality of the air on board commercial aircraft is high and under normal conditions cabin air is cleaner than the air in most buildings." Despite this, however, the WHO still endorses cumbersome and - some suggest - inefficient screening and tracing process for TB patients who wish to fly. Abubakar's report indicates that the WHO-recommended process costs too much, and is unreasonable because of how hard it is to trace passengers, and how hard it is to identify and communicate with officials from countries across the world.

During his first year in the White House, President Obama ordered that a 22-year travel ban on people living with HIV/AIDS be lifted - a process that was started by the Bush administration, and applauded by activists and public health officials. In light of new evidence suggesting that TB patients pose little to no risk to fellow air passengers, the WHO and other health organizations should take similar steps to ease travel burdens on people living with the disease.

Photo credit: Kashif Mardani