Health expert calls for tighter screening of immigrants in TB scare
A PUBLIC health expert yesterday warned tighter screening of immigrants is needed after two former seafood processing workers were found to have a super strain of TB which is resistant to modernper strain of TB which is resistant to modern drugs.
More than 80 workers at Alexander Buchan Ltd In Peterhead have been contacted by health officials after a worker was found to be suffering from multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis.
MDR TB is a rare strain of the contagious lung disease and takes longer to treat.
Employees at Aberdeen’s Piper Seafoods are also being offered tests after one of its employees was diagnosed with TB.
Health officials have not yet established whether this case is also the MDR strain, but believe it is “highly likely” as the two workers had lived together in the Grampian area.
The worker who contracted the MDR strain is being treated in Newcastle General Hospital and the other is a patient at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.
Both patients, thought to be Eastern European, although health chiefs will not confirm this, are said to be “recovering” and responding well to treatment.
Immigrants coming into Britain are not routinely screened for diseases such as TB or HIV, which are both widespread in parts of Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Such tests are routine for immigrants in Australia, Canada and the USA.
Consequently, there have been several outbreaks of TB, a disease which doctors thought had been beaten in Britain, in recent years.
Yesterday, NHS Grampian said it had written to workers at both companies to offer them tests and workers under 35 will undergo a skin test while those over 35 will have a chest X-ray.
Around three-quarters of the workers they have written to are from Eastern European countries.
An incident team has been set up in light of the outbreak.
Yesterday, Dr Diana Webster, a consultant in public health medicine, who is leading the team, warned that tighter controls should be used to screen foreign nationals coming into this country.
She said: “This is the first case of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Grampian that has been notified to us. The problem with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis cases is that patients have to take more medicine for longer periods of time.
“The largest number of people diagnosed over the last year have come from countries where TB is more common. Some of those people arriving in the UK don’t show signs of an active infection but, after living in the country for a few months, the disease becomes active.
“This may be due to the distress of living in different country which could lower their immune systems. It is important that we have good screening procedures in place.
This is the first case of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Grampian that has been notified to us
“Our biggest hurdle is to ensure that foreign nationals arriving in the country are aware of the symptoms and register with a doctor.”
Information published last week by Health Protection Scotland and the Health Protection Agency in England found only one per cent of TB cases that occurred during 2000-2006 were multi-drug resistant.
There have been 18 cases of MDR TB in Scotland during this period.
