DR Peter Ormerod's pain has become his abiding pleasure.

Struck down by tuberculosis when just seven years old, the consultant has made a career out of curing sufferers of the debilitating disease.

In fact, if you are going to get TB it is probably best to contract it in the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley area.

Since Dr Ormerod came to town the incidence of TB has been slashed and the trend well and truly bucked as nationally cases have swelled.

Dr Ormerod's fascination with TB, which has thrust him into the spotlight as one of the country's leading experts, began when doctors diagnosed the infection when he was seven.

A lump under his right arm was removed and the initial fear was that he had leukaemia.

But, after the diagnosis was confirmed, three months in hospital followed with daily jabs of the drug streptomycin.

"I just remember having a lot of injections in my bum," he said. "I was off school for three months and because I was so young I did not really understand the implications.

"It was still relatively uncommon in children back then.

"But I became fascinated by the medical process and that is when I decided to become a doctor."

Dr Ormerod, 46, a consultant chest physician, chose to come to Blackburn in 1981 because it had one of the highest rates of TB in the UK.

There were about 160 cases a year - several times higher than the national average - and the situation was deteriorating, mainly due to a lack of guidance on the treatment of TB.

That is when Dr Ormerod and his colleagues in Blackburn got to work on guidelines which were largely based on preventive measures, including the screening of new immigrants. They pre-empted national guidelines which were finally published by the National TB Society three years later.

The results of the pioneering work by Dr Ormerod, who now works alongside colleague Dr Nigel Horsfield, have been startling. In the past 15 years the incidence of TB has fallen by three quarters while the number of child cases have been slashed by an 95 per cent.

Rossendale-born Dr Ormerod modestly puts the success down to the excellent support services led by a team of community nurses at Montague Health Centre under the supervision of Carole Palmer.

"It is crucial there are enough TB nurses in the community," he said.

"They are the legs of the service and have to do all the checks and ensure people are taking their medication."

No one can question Dr Ormerod's credentials.

He will be the chairman of the National TB Committee until the Year 2000 and will be responsible for publishing the treatment guidelines for the whole of the UK. He is also a member of several Government advisory bodies on TB and has written more than 50 scientific papers and articles.

He said: "Obviously it is a disease I could relate to.

"It is quite specialised but the majority of people can be cured if given the correct treatment for the correct length of time.

"Treatment has been revolutionised and usually comes in tablet form.

"But the course of treatment has got to be completed.

"People are 60 times more likely to relapse if they don't take it correctly.

"We still get one or two deaths a year in this area."

The disease is still between 25 and 50 times more likely to affect the Asian community, mainly because a large majority are born on the Indian subcontinent where TB is still a scourge.

It is also 10 times more likely to hit a 75-year-old than a 25-year-old as the immune system declines.

"Proportionally, we have had the biggest fall in the whole of the UK if you compare the areas with the highest incidence of TB.

"People look to our service from other parts of the country."

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