TB Patient Escapes Quarantine

More selfishness and endangerment of innocent people.

PBC:

A man kept in isolation after he was diagnosed with contagious tuberculosis broke a hospital window and fled from his room at a Little Rock hospital.

Franklin Greenwood, 50, was placed in isolation on June 29 after he was seen coughing up blood outside of the city's traffic court and was released by a judge to the state Health Department's custody. He left the hospital on July 1. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Greenwood's disappearance in Wednesday's editions.

A state health official said Greenwood has a form of tuberculosis that would respond to treatment but that it is still important to find him because he is contagious.

Greenwood had been at Little Rock District Court for traffic offenses, officials said. He was taken to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital, where he was under a medical isolation order, according to the Health Department.

State tuberculosis control officer Dr. Iram Bakhtawar wrote in a draft affidavit that Greenwood is believed to have "an active case of tuberculosis in an active state and in a communicable form."

This TB quarantine is becoming fairly common these days. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit in Arizona for civil rights violations because they quarantined a TB patient.