A full tuberculosis (TB) service will resume in Cork next month with the opening of a new TB laboratory at Cork University Hospital (CUH), writes Michelle McDonagh.
The existing laboratory, which was housed in a temporary prefab, was forced to close early last year due to the poor standard of its facilities.
An outbreak of TB in two Cork creches last year resulted in 18 children and three adults being diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease.
The Irish Thoracic Society (ITS) called on the Health Service Executive (HSE) to review national tuberculosis services as a matter of urgency in the wake of the Cork outbreak.
The society called for the provision of resources, including adequate isolation and diagnostic facilities, increased public health and hospital-based resources, such as specialist TB nurses, and additional consultant respiratory physicians with expertise in the management of TB which is "essentially a preventable disease".
A spokeswoman for the HSE South said yesterday the building work on the replacement TB laboratory at the university hospital was on schedule and due for completion this month.
The commissioning process will then begin and it is expected that a full TB service will resume by the end of March.
"It is anticipated the new facility will process approximately 7,000 samples per annum with the opportunity to introduce some new procedures that have recently been developed," she added.
She said adverse weather conditions and other ongoing site construction associated with the new catering facility at CUH had resulted in a major deterioration in the condition of the temporary TB lab building.
The ITS was particularly concerned at the Cork TB outbreak, as it occurred in a vulnerable population of pre-school children. Furthermore, it occurred against a backdrop of an increasing burden of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB and extensive-drug-resistant (XDR) TB internationally, while a small number of cases of these strains have also been recorded in Ireland in recent years.
Meanwhile, newborn babies in the Cork region will be unable to avail of a BCG vaccine to protect against TB until March at the earliest.
Plans to roll out a routine vaccination scheme for newborn babies in Cork were put on hold last year due to the shortage of the BCG vaccine in Europe.