Dozens of Londoners are being tested for tuberculosis after someone was diagnosed with a rare, drug resistant strain of the infectious disease.
Public health officials tell BlackburnNews.com one person who attended an english as a second language class next to Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School has been diagnosed with TB.
The bacteria that causes TB is spread from tiny droplets released into the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
It can be treated with antibiotics, but sometimes the strain evolves and becomes what is called multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.
"There are common drugs we use for people with active disease, and all that multi-drug resistance means is that the drugs we would normally use aren't working in this particular case," says the Middlesex-London Health Unit's Manager of Infectious Disease Tristan Squire Smith. "There are second-line drugs that are effective and are working well."
This is only the third case of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in London in the last 10 years.
The people who were in close contact with the infected person are being contacted by public health officials to be tested for tuberculosis. A clinic will be set up at the school in the coming weeks.
To be tested, a doctor will give you a small injection in your forearm. After three days, if there is a reaction on the skin your body has been, at one point, exposed to TB.
Public health estimates about 60 people have been exposed to this version of the disease.
