Treating the type of drug-resistant tuberculosis that health authorities fear an infected US lawyer, Andrew Speaker, may have spread during air flights to and from Europe this month can be very expensive.

[box] Speaker has extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR TB, in which the disease organism resists treatment by standard and even second-line antibiotics. It is far more costly and difficult to treat than ordinary TB. TB is a sometimes fatal bacterial infection usually attacking the lungs.

[box] The cost of treating a patient like Speaker with XDR TB ranges from about $250,000 to $350,000 depending on whether surgery is necessary, according to Dr. Gwen Huitt (pictured) of National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, where Speaker is being treated.

[box] Kaiser Permanente of Georgia, his health insurance company, paid roughly $12,000 for Speaker to be flown yesterday on a special plane from an airfield in Gwinnett County, Georgia, to Denver for treatment, according to company spokeswoman Beverly Thomas. Thomas declined to say how much the insurer would pay for his total medical care.

[box] Speaker may have to undergo two years of treatment, according to Huitt, and get antibiotics that might include: moxifloxacin, used against certain bacteria that cause infections in the lungs and sinuses; ethionamide, used for TB and leprosy; and clofazimine, generally used for leprosy.