RESIDENTS at an old people's home are to be tested after a member of staff contracted the killer disease TB in the second alert of its kind this month.

Staff and residents at Sandy Brook home for the elderly, Lower Darwen, are being tested by East Lancashire Health Authority workers for the disease. A spokeswoman for the authority said today that the 27-year-old female worker began showing symptoms of the disease six weeks ago and stopped working at the Sandy Lane home four weeks ago. She was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis earlier this week and is receiving treatment.

The health authority spokeswoman said: "Everyone who has been in contact with her will be tested. TB is normally contracted through close contact over a long period of time."

No one at the home was available to comment today.

Earlier this month, 60 residents and staff at the council-run Greenways residential home, Darwen, were tested for the disease after a 44-year-old female worker was taken to hospital suffering from TB.

The health authority spokeswoman said: "Nobody else at Greenways was found to have caught it. There is no apparent connection between the two cases."

The once-common disease is rare thanks to the BCG vaccination programme and is normally associated with Third World countries, but in recent years there have been more cases in Britain and other developed nations and it has been suggested that new strains may be resistant to antibiotics.

Early symptoms include a dry cough followed by a wet cough that may be bloodstained, loss of appetite, weight loss, chest pain, shortness of breath and night sweats. The airborne disease is passed on when an infected person talks, coughs or sneezes.

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