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Birmingham schoolgirls test positive for TB

01/05/2008

Eight pupils at a secondary school in Birmingham have tested positive for tuberculosis (TB), and are now receiving treatment, health officials have confirmed.

A further 13 children are receiving preventative treatment as a precaution and nine more are undergoing further assessment to confirm whether or not they have TB.

All close contacts of the children will now be tested to see if they have the potentially-fatal disease.

The cases were detected after all girls at the Birchfield Independent School for Girls in Aston were screened for TB.

Health officials carried out the tests after two cases of TB emerged at the school in the past year.

About nine million new cases of TB, an infectious disease caused by bacteria, emerge globally each year, resulting in nearly two million deaths.

It is spread by close, prolonged personal contact to somebody with infectious TB.

A spokesperson for the Heart of Birmingham teaching primary care trust said there is no need for the general public to be alarmed.

"TB is not the sort of disease you'll catch walking down the street - the general public have a very low risk," he added.

"The way the disease is transmitted does mean that you are really quite unlikely to get TB unless you are a close contact of someone who has TB and then you'll be invited for a test."