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- Be TB safe in your care home or service
Be TB safe in your care home or service
Recent cases of tuberculosis (TB) in care staff in Essex have caught care services by surprise. Here is how you could minimise the risk of your service doing the same.
- Watch for symptoms
- Advise any staff member with a new cough lasting more than 3 weeks to ask their GP if they need a chest X-ray. This helps detect TB or other serious illness early.
- Screen new staff for latent TB*
- Ask newly employed staff to speak to their GP about a latent TB* test if they:
- Were born in, or lived for more than 6 months in, a country where TB is common** (including any country in Sub-Saharan Africa).
- Have been in the UK for less than 5 years.
- Are aged 16 to 35.
*TB means the person has inactive TB bacteria in their body but no symptoms. It can become active later and spread to others if untreated.
** How to find out if TB is common in a country (> 150 per 100,000 people) is explained on the following Government webpage: Tuberculosis by country: rates per 100,000 people - GOV.UK
These measures help to prevent staff members getting TB or helps catch it early. This limits the number of people the infection can spread to.