27 January 2009

Doctors are carrying out tests to establish the cause of an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Derbyshire.  

Four men from the Carr Vale area of Bolsover were taken ill with the disease earlier this month.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said the men were at Chesterfield Royal Hospital and were recovering well.

Legionnaires' is a form of pneumonia which can be fatal. It is spread through the air from a water source and initial symptoms are similar to flu.
It can not be passed from person to person.

Source tests

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) East Midlands said it was working to trace the source of the Derbyshire outbreak and liaising with other organisations including Bolsover District Council.

Dr Fran Pitt, of the HPA East Midlands' north health protection unit said: "We're looking to see whether we can link any types, to see whether they truly are linked and then we are also testing the environment and various places where we think they might have caught the infection from.

"Given that we haven't had any further cases since this and we're over 10 days and the incubation is 10 days, we believe that this might have been a one-off event."