Health officials are making efforts to find people who may have been in contact with a patient suffering from a rare and deadly form of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in April, the patient traveled from India to the United States, through Chicago. She suffers from an extremely drug-resistant form of the disease; it is resistant to most TB drugs. Each year, three to four cases of the disease on average are reported in the United States.

A spokeswoman for the agency did not tell about the matter in detail, referring to a federal patient privacy law. According to her, the agency thinks that the public is not exposed.

According to Debra Quackenbush, spokeswoman for the health department, "This particular case we mentioned in the release - those people in contact with the person were interviewed and being monitored. The general public is not at risk. It's important to get information out there about TB".

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said health officials in Illinois are making efforts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order to find people who may have been in prolonged direct contact with the patient in close quarters.

TB is not a highly communicable disease like the flu or measles. However, according to Skinner, the disease is dangerous particularly for those people who have weakened immune systems and health officials are quite concerned about the situation.

Each year, the disease attacks nearly 9 million people and is a reason behind 1.5 million deaths throughout the world.