Thirteen hospital staff test positive for tuberculosis

One worker at the Harborough Lodge unit in Northampton was hospitalised after developing active TB, but 12 others were found to have only the latent form of the disease.

HSJ revealed last month that two patients had died after being treated at the unit, which is run by the University Hospitals of Leicester, following a decision to increase the number of patients it was treating.

One patient, who died in July 2011, is believed to have infected a second patient at the unit who died earlier this year and was found to have the same strain.

University Hospitals of Leicester, which runs the service, told HSJ it was unclear whether the staff had been infected by either of the patients. However, at the time of the earlier infections, the Health Protection Agency said the first patient who died had a highly-infectious strain.

Concerns had been raised at the time that dialysis stations at the unit were too close together and posed a potential infection risk. It followed an earlier expansion of Harborough Lodge from a six-bed renal unit to include 15 dialysis stations seeing 84 patients a week.

Following the deaths and HPA infection control advice, the number of patients being treated was reduced to 60 a week.

A University Hospitals Leicester spokesman said all staff who worked at the unit since January 2011 had now been tested.

He added: “We can confirm a number of staff tested positive for latent TB, this means they have been exposed to TB at some point in their lives but that it is not active TB. All staff that tested positive have been offered treatment.

“A member of staff has developed active TB and required hospital treatment but it is not thought to have been infectious.”

Explaining the delay in testing the spokesman said: “After the death of the first patient we took advice from the HPA about testing our staff and were advised it was not required. After the second case the advice changed and we tested all staff accordingly.

“Any patient thought to be at risk because of contact with either of the TB infected patients was offered testing. However most patients dialysed on a different day and had never come into contact with the patients and therefore didn’t need to be tested.”