Race to find source of Legionnaire's outbreak as death toll rises to three

HEALTH leaders are investigating an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease after two more people died from the bug.

The men, aged 81 and 65, died in the Glasgow and Lanarkshire area within the past few days after being admitted to hospital with the condition.

Their deaths bring the number of people to have died from the disease in the past two weeks to three, and there has been a spike in the number of confirmed cases.

Public health officials said yesterday they were now treating the incidents as an outbreak and had launched a high-level investigation.

However, they have admitted that they have so far been unable to find the source for the "most unusual" number of cases.

As well as the patients who have died, a further four people were in hospital last night suffering from the disease.

The Public Health Protection Units from both NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) and NHS Lanarkshire are working together in a joint investigation with Health Protection Scotland (HPS), the Health and Safety Executive, environmental health officers and other partner agencies.

Dr Syed Ahmed, NHSGGC's lead consultant in public health, said: "Despite our very thorough investigations to date, we have been unable to find a common source for the infections.

"We expect a small number of cases within the community every year but this rise, so close together, is most unusual and we feel we must treat these cases as an outbreak.

"Together with NHS Lanarkshire, HPS, environmental health and other colleagues, we are investigating each and every case to identify a common source," he said.

Dr Ahmed stressed that legionella cannot be spread from person to person. He said: "It is a bacteria found in water and can be spread through aerosols produced from water, such as air conditioning and showers, and it cannot be contracted by drinking contaminated water.

"The symptoms and signs of Legionnaire's disease include headache, fever, dry cough, breathing difficulties, stomach pains and diarrhoea. I would like to advise anyone currently with these symptoms to contact NHS 24."

Five of the confirmed cases are from the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board area and two are from Lanarkshire Health Board area.

The 81-year-old man was one of the five existing confirmed cases and the second was a 65-year-old admitted to hospital at the weekend suffering from the disease. A third elderly man, who had underlying medical problems, died from the condition last month.

There are more than 500 cases of Legionnaire's disease in the UK each year and about one in ten victims dies.Germ carried on water drops

Legionnaire's disease was named after an outbreak at a hotel in the US city of Philadelphia in 1976, where there was a convention of the American Legion.

The causative organism for most cases of Legionnaire's disease, was thought to have been present in the hotel's cooling towers.

Water droplets in the form of an aerosol contaminated the hotel's air conditioning systems allowing the bacteria to come into contact with the convention guests.

The disease is a type of pneumonia.

The illness occurs more frequently in men than women. It usually affects middle-aged or elderly people.

The germ which causes the disease is a bacterium called Legionella pneumophila. People catch Legionnaire's disease by inhaling small droplets of water suspended in the air that contain the bacterium.