HEALTH: Tuberculosis Case Prompts Search for Patient’s Fellow Airline Passengers. “Health officials are trying to identify people who may have come into contact with a woman who flew from India to Chicago in April and had a type of tuberculosis that is highly resistant to drug treatment. . . . After arriving in Chicago, the woman traveled to Missouri and Tennessee and then returned to Chicago, where she sought treatment at a hospital about seven weeks after she had landed in the United States. The hospital gave a diagnosis of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, and the woman was transported on Friday by special air and ground ambulances to a hospital at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. She is in an isolation room ‘specifically designed for handling patients with respiratory infections, including XDR-TB,’ according to a statement issued by the N.I.H. . . . Compared with most other infectious diseases, even ordinary cases of TB are difficult to treat. Patients have to take several drugs for six to nine months. As its name implies, the extensively drug-resistant version is even worse. According to the C.D.C., only about 30 percent to 50 percent of XDR-TB cases are cured; ordinary forms can almost always be cured.”