UK town struck by major disease outbreak
Date: 05-Aug-02
Country: UK
Four of those diagnosed are in intensive care and a further 11 people in the town of Barrow-in-Furness by the Irish Sea are suspected of having the disease, a spokesman for Furness General hospital said.
He said the incubation period meant the number of cases could rise to at least a hundred.
Legionnaires' disease is a form of pneumonia caused by bacteria living in water droplets. Symptoms are at first flu-like, followed by fever and chills, then a dry cough.
There is an incubation period of several days between infection and onset of the disease, which has a 15 percent fatality rate.
A team was investigating the cause of the outbreak, Ian Cumming, chief executive of the Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust, told Sky News television.
"The only thing that links these people is that they all visited Barrow town centre in the past couple of weeks," he said.
"We have narrowed it down to about six possible contamination sites."
Cummings said that a major incident team, set up in Barrow and Furness General hospital, was on alert to deal with more cases. He urged anyone who thought he might be infected to visit a doctor.
The disease was named in 1976 when an outbreak killed 29 people at an American Legion Convention in Philadelphia.
The first cases of Legionnaires' in Britain were spotted in 1977. An outbreak in Stafford in 1985 infected 68 people, of whom 23 died.
