TB outbreak at Birmingham girl's school

An independent school in Birmingham is at the centre of a tuberculosis outbreak after 30 girls tested positive for the disease.

Pupils at the Birchfield Independent School for Girls in Aston were tested after one pupil was diagnosed with the disease and health officials have confirmed that thirty children returned positive skin tests for the disease, said a spokesman for the Heart of Birmingham primary care trust.

None of the girls have attended the school since their diagnosis and have begun antibiotic treatment to fight the disease.

Paul Sommerfeld, chairman of charity TB Alert, told the Guardian newspaper that there is a "big difference" between being infected with TB and "active TB" which can spread to other people.

"Even if they do develop active TB, it is by no means the case that everybody who has active TB is infectious. Patients are not infectious once they have been under treatment for a few days," added Mr Sommerfeld.

The Health Protection Agency estimates that there are about nine million new cases of TB and two million deaths from the disease worldwide, describing it as the leading cause of death among curable infectious diseases.