Man with drug-resistant TB locked up indefinitely

Behind the county hospital’s tall cinderblock
walls, a 27-year-old tuberculosis patient sits in a jail cell equipped
with a ventilation system that keeps germs from escaping.

Robert
Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his
life, since last July. But he has not been charged with a crime.
Instead, he suffers from an extensively drug-resistant strain of
tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. It is considered virtually untreatable.

County
health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to
the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting
others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors’ instructions to
wear a mask in public.

“I’m being treated
worse than an inmate,” Daniels said in a telephone interview with The
Associated Press last month. “I’m all alone. Four walls. Even the door
to my room has been locked. I haven’t seen my reflection in months.”

Though
Daniels’ confinement is extremely rare, health experts say it is a
situation that U.S. public health officials may have to confront more
and more because