30 contract TB in UK girls' school
Pastor Dale Morgan
30 contract TB in UK girls' school*
Martin Hodgson
Thursday May 1, 2008
The Guardian
Thirty pupils at a Birmingham secondary school have been diagnosed with
tuberculosis, health officials said last night.
All 200 pupils at Birchfield Independent Girls' School in Aston were
screened after three girls tested positive for the bacterial infection.
A spokesman for Heart of Birmingham primary care trust said one girl
contracted the disease last summer and was successfully treated. But in
February, two more girls at the Muslim school developed the infectious
form, leading it and health officials to test all pupils earlier this month.
"Thirty children returned positive skin tests for the disease," he said.
The girls have not returned to school but begun antibiotic treatment.
They are awaiting x-ray screening to determine the extent of their
infection and will be treated at Birmingham Chest Clinic and the
Birmingham Children's Hospital.
Those who have been in close contact with the girls will also be tested
- but there was no reason for the wider community to be alarmed, said
the spokesman.
Paul Sommerfeld, the chair of the charity TB Alert, said the chance of
the infection spreading further were slim.
"There is a big difference between being infected with TB, and active TB
which can be spread to other people," he said. "It is very important for
public health that they [the 30 children] do not develop active TB.
"Even if they do develop active TB, it is by no means the case that
everybody who has active TB is infectious. Patients are not infectious
once they have been under treatment for a few days."
About 8,000 cases of TB are reported in the UK every year, mostly in
major cities. The Health Protection Agency estimates that the disease
kills nearly two million people worldwide every year.