Almost 3,000 staff and students have been quarantined in a
northeast China senior high school after 29 people were diagnosed
as having contracted tuberculosis, a local health official said on
Sunday.
The first student fell ill at the No.1 Senior High School in
June in Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province, city health bureau head Li
Ziming said.
More students and some teachers caught the disease at the end of
July prompting the local government to deploy a medical team to
prevent the spread of the disease. To date, 2,670 of the 2,859
students, teachers and staff members have received TB bacteria
tests which are being examined.
Fourteen of the 29 patients are receiving treatment at isolation
wards in the city's TB prevention and treatment hospital and 15
others are confined to the school or at home in a stable
condition.
All other students, teachers and staff of the school have been
confined to the campus while health tests and treatment are carried
out.
The educational facility, established in 1904, is predominantly
a boarding school catering for students from rural areas. As it's a
key experimental school in Liaoning it would normally start summer
vacation in early August, said an official. However, the school
postponed the summer vacation, which was scheduled to start on
Saturday, due to the outbreak.
A report from the Ministry of Health showed that in the second
quarter, TB, hepatitis B, bacillary and amoebic dysentery, measles
and syphilis were the five most commonly reported epidemic diseases
accounting for 86.11 percent of all such reports.
In east China's Jiangsu Province alone, 15,657 cases of TB
were reported in the second quarter of this year. This far exceeds
the incidences of other diseases in the province.
(Xinhua News Agency August 7, 2006)