Anthrax survivor goes home

2006-03-30 10:22

New York - Homecoming was bittersweet for Vado Diomande, who beat the odds by surviving a usually deadly anthrax infection.

After a month of treatment at a Pennsylvania hospital, the Ivory Coast native returned to the hugs and cheers of friends and relatives in New York on Wednesday to continue recovering from a form of the disease that is usually fatal.

But he and his wife can't go home to their Manhattan apartment because he can't be exposed to the bleach used to clean it. Many of their belongings were incinerated. And they're encountering the financial and emotional effects the ordeal had on friends and neighbours.

"Now, as we come back to New York, I find that we are facing a life that has many questions," his wife, Lisa Diomande, said at a press conference with her husband on Wednesday night. "We don't know where we're going to live."

The couple are staying temporarily with family members outside New York.

Overkill

Vado Diomande, a dancer and drum maker, collapsed after a February 16 dance performance at a Pennsylvania university. Officials believe he inhaled anthrax spores while using animal skins to make drums.

Diomande, 44, was discharged from the hospital a week ago.

"We feel so fortunate to have Vado back and doing well," dancer Aisha Saunders said before presenting him with flowers. "Vado is an inspiration to us all. He is loved and respected by many in the community."

Amid the happiness, Lisa Diomande and others expressed confusion over how the decontamination was handled, saying authorities may have been overzealous at the couple's apartment building and Vado Diomande's Brooklyn work space.

All their porous possessions - clothing, curtains, rugs, the bed - had to be destroyed, she said, adding they're worried that the image of West African dance and drum making was tainted by the ordeal and they're concerned about the dance company's future.

She said they were told the illness posed a very low public health risk, because it can't be spread from person to person.

"So why was it presented this way to the public, and then a clean-up operation that was top-level in terms of presentation, in terms of excessive clean-up?" she asked.

Kafando, who runs a recording studio in the Brooklyn building where Vado Diomande worked, said his studio was destroyed in the clean-up. His business partner, Persephone DaCosta, said officials did not give them a list of the items that had to be incinerated.

Attorneys Norman Siegel and Guy Vann appeared with the Diomandes and their supporters on Wednesday night and said they have started an investigation into the incident and response.

"We understand the public health concerns, but perhaps what happened here was overkill and overreaction," Siegel said.

A spokesperson for the Environmental Protection Agency, Mary Mears, said the EPA directed the clean-up of the Diomandes' apartment and consulted on the decontamination effort in Brooklyn.

- AP