By New York Daily News

NEW YORK – A Manhattan dance troupe leader was infected with anthrax after inhaling spores from raw animal skins he brought to the city from Africa to make drums, officials revealed Wednesday.

Authorities went to extraordinary lengths to reassure New Yorkers that Vado Diomande’s frightening illness was not a replay of the 2001 anthrax terror attacks that sowed fear across the nation.

“We have every reason to believe that this infection is an isolated, accidentally and naturally transmitted case,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

“There is no – let me repeat – no evidence at this time of any criminal intent associated with this infection,” Bloomberg added.

Even though the city said there was no public health crisis, the emergency response was dramatic: a live City Hall news conference, a briefing from the feds and surreal scenes of police and firefighters in biohazard suits scouring Diomande’s home and workplace.

Diomande, 44, an Ivory Coast immigrant who lives in the West Village and stores his equipment in Brooklyn, was in fair condition at a hospital in Pennsylvania. He fell ill at a Chinese restaurant after a performance at a nearby university in Pennsylvania last Thursday.

“He had difficulty breathing. It was severe and he had to be taken to the hospital right away,” said Jennifer Vincent, 36, who is married to Diomande’s nephew.

At first, doctors were mystified by the man’s sudden lung crisis, but by Monday, blood tests had pointed to a dreaded diagnosis: inhalation anthrax.

A relative and three people who worked with Diomande were being treated with antibiotics as a precaution because they also may have been exposed to the dangerous spores.

Anthrax is a naturally occurring bacteria that shows up in soil and grazing animals. People are infected by touching, ingesting or – most harmfully – breathing in the spores.

Human cases were relatively rare until 2001, when a terrorist mailed envelopes laced with the white powder to media outlets and politicians, killing five people and sickening 17. Investigators never determined who was behind the attacks.

Diomande’s personal physician, Dr. Melanie Maclennan, said Diomande had worked for years with animal skins and probably had “low-grade chronic exposure” to the bacteria before something triggered the infection last week.

She said anthrax also could have been at the root of a severe skin infection that attacked Diomande’s thigh during a 2003 tour of Europe and Africa and landed him in the hospital for six weeks.

Even though inhaled anthrax is the deadliest form, especially if caught late, doctors were optimistic Diomande would survive.

“I expect him to recover,” Maclennan said.

After the anthrax diagnosis was confirmed, hazardous-material and counterterrorism teams swooped on Diomande’s apartment and the DUMBO warehouse where he kept the goat hides.

The stilt dancer and choreographer had visited the Ivory Coast in December and returned to New York with the unprocessed skins in suitcases.

“It’s my understanding that spores can reside within the hairs of the hides,” said Dr. Lisa Rotz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The process of drum making involves soaking the hide and stretching it and scraping the hide … He could aerosolize any spores.”

Diomande came down with flulike symptoms after working on the hides at Pinnacle Self-Storage near the Manhattan Bridge overpass in Brooklyn, officials said.

Nevertheless, he embarked on the two-day trip last week with his troupe, Kotchegna, collapsing after a performance at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania.

He was being treated at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa., where he underwent surgery to drain fluid from his lungs, family members said.

FDNY and NYPD officials in moon suits secured Diomande’s home and warehouse, and CDC teams were preparing to swab the Brooklyn site for anthrax. They were also focusing on a black van he used to transport the skins from Kennedy Airport to the DUMBO warehouse.

Tom Beale, 27, a wood sculptor whose studio is in the building, said he felt anxious.

“I feel like, “Am I exposed to anthrax and am I going to have to go to the hospital?”‘ he asked. “You hear anthrax in your building, you kind of freak out.”

On Diomande’s street, neighbor Ralph Zeitlin, 69, was taking things in stride. “You can’t live in paranoia,” he said.