Meeting for parents as creche TB cases mount

AN AVERAGE of three cases of TB a week have been diagnosed at two Cork creches since March 15, bringing to 18 the record number of cases confirmed.

Two new cases emerged this week, involving a child at Nurture Childcare in Douglas, Cork City, and a child at Panda Paws in Little Island, Co Cork.

The growing number of cases has prompted public health officials to take the unprecedented step of org-anising a mass briefing meeting for about 300 parents of children attending the creches.

The meeting will be addressed by the Health Service Executive (HSE) outbreak control team, at the Silversprings Moran Hotel in Cork on Monday night.

Public health officials last night said they had not previously dealt with a TB outbreak of this scale. The largest outbreak they could recall comprised 13 cases at a school in Mitchelstown in Co Cork in 1999.

Since the latest outbreak began, 220 children who tested negative for TB at both creches have been put on a two-month course of antibiotics as a precaution and are undergoing chest X-rays. Another 20 children with a latent form of TB are on a nine-month course of antibiotics, as are six staff members. In total, 16 children and two childcare workers, one from each creche, have been diagnosed with TB.