Almost 3,000 staff and students have been quarantined in a
northeast China senior high school after 29 people 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 free 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 school, established in 1904, is predominantly a boarding
school catering to students from rural areas. As it is a key
experimental school in Liaoning, the school usually started 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 TB 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 total epidemic disease
reports.
In east China's Jiangsu Province alone, 15,657 cases of TB
were reported in the second quarter of this year, far exceeding
incidences of other diseases in the province.
(Xinhua News Agency August 7, 2006)