Odd

Italian recluse taken from apartment after 26 years

Updated: 2006-09-13 09:14

A sanitary worker arranges her mask in an area near Bucharest in a May 21, 2006 file photo. When Italian health officials came to remove a woman from the apartment she has not left in more than two decades they had to don respirators against the stench, newspapers reported Sunday. A bout of influenza 26 years ago terrified the woman so much that she tried to seal herself off from germs by barricading herself in her home, the papers said.[Reuters]