KEY POINTS:
New Zealanders were forced to pay up $330,000 for a secret charter flight to return a tourist to South Korea after she arrived here with a potentially fatal and infectious illness.
The 67-year-old arrived on an Korean Air flight, aware she had a deadly form of tuberculosis, but
hid her medications so she could get through our border control. She spent days with her daughter before visiting a doctor and was then isolated for months in Auckland Hospital.
Commercial airlines refused to carry the woman and the chartered jet had to be fitted with a negative pressure chamber, designed for the SARS epidemic, to ensure the pilots did not catch the illness.
The flight, organised by the New Zealand Immigration Service and Ministry of Health, took off at 3am to "avoid media scrutiny" and cost $330,000, according to a paper written on the case by Dr Margaret Wilsher, the president of the Auckland medico-legal society.
She wrote that the woman had "extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis and was untreatable and hence incurable - and worse she was highly infectious". The woman spent nearly three months in hospital - care for such cases costs about $2700 a day - taking the bill to more than $500,000.
The woman's daughter, who lives in New Zealand, helped organise her mother's trip with the full knowledge she had untreatable TB, and told medical staff that she hid her medications "so her state of health would not be detected at the border".
The woman was in New Zealand on a three-month visitor permit to see her daughter. She was not health-screened at the border because she entered the country on a visa waiver scheme.
She later went to her daughter's doctor in Auckland, complaining of chest pains, before being confined in isolation at Auckland City Hospital.
Doctors decided the public health risk was too great and broke patient confidentiality to alert the Immigration Service. The revelations have only just come to light and, despite the woman being returned home on May 5, 2005, the fallout from this case may be far from over.
It is also an illustration of the cost of foreign patients on the New Zealand health system.
The medical paper states authorities have been unable to ascertain whether any fellow passengers and air crew on her flight to New Zealand were traced and screened - as recommended by World Health Organisation guidelines.
The Herald on Sunday spoke with three Korean Air staff - a communications spokesman, the airport manager and another staffer - and none could recall the TB passenger case or if fellow passengers had been notified.
One said the passengers were unlikely to have been contacted because passengers' phone details were not recorded.
Immigration head Andrew Annakin said in a written statement that the Immigration Service had confidence in its screening programmes.
He said applicants for permanent residency must have an acceptable standard of health "to minimise costs and demands on New Zealand's health services". This is proven by a medical and chest X-ray certificate.
Temporary entrants of up to 12 months must also undergo the checks. But, he said, some health costs were incurred by people here on short-term visits, such as in the woman's case.
"Since approximately two-and-a-half million short-term visitors arrive in New Zealand every year, it would be highly impractical to make every visitor and tourist go through an expensive screening process," he said.
Annakin said that the assertion non-New Zealanders "suck up the health dollars at the expense of New Zealanders is completely false".
Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove declined to comment, saying foreign patients were an "operational matter" for the Labour Department to comment on. However, his office tried instead to be quoted on attacking the National Party's immigration policy .
National's health spokesman Tony Ryall said taxpayers would want to know if the $330,000 flight was the cheapest option.
What is TB?
Tuberculosis affects the lungs in 80 per cent of cases.
A persistent cough, weight loss and night sweats are some symptoms of the disease.
A Ministry of Health media release in March said people who have had a cough for no obvious reason for longer than three weeks, particularly if they had been in contact with someone who has TB, should visit their doctor.
On average there are about 400 cases of TB diagnosed in New Zealand each year.
It is spread by breathing in infected droplets that have been breathed or coughed out by a person with TB.
The disease can progress at different rates but can be cured if treated early with antibiotics.
About two million people die from it worldwide each year.
