Sixth-year students at a boys' secondary school in Dublin have been tested for TB after a classmate was found to have the disease.
Twenty-one of his classmates were found to have TB infection but not the active disease. They have been offered preventive treatment, which is very effective, says the Northern Area Health Board, St Joseph's Christian Brothers School, in Fairview, yesterday confirmed the health board told it in mid-December that a pupil had contracted TB.
The other sixth-year pupils were screened before Christmas and some were recalled for further tests last week and are receiving preventive treatment. Parents were informed by post during the Christmas break of what was happening, a CBS statement said.
It is common for people to be infected with TB but to be unaffected by it. Dr Mary Cronin, public health specialist with the Eastern Regional Health Authority, said yesterday that TB was difficult to catch. It required close, prolonged contact with an infectious case for the infection to be passed from person to person. It was usually people living in the same house who had a risk of catching TB, she said.
An average of about three cases of TB are notified in the ERHA region every week. The number of cases of TB disease notified in the region (Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow) is dropping. Provisional figures for 2000 show that 147 cases were notified, as against 180 for 1999.
Referring to the screening at the Fairview school, the health board said 21 of pupils tested had at some stage been exposed to TB infection but active TB had not been confirmed in any.