Second legionnaires' outbreak death

A second patient has died from legionnaires' disease in Barrow-in-Furness.

Hospital officials said the second victim was a woman in her fifties who was admitted to the Furness Hospital in the Cumbrian town a few days ago.

Around 100 people are also suffering from the disease in what is Britain's biggest outbreak in 20 years.

In a statement Morecambe Bay Hospitals NHS Trust chief executive Ian Cumming said: "Our thoughts and deepest sympathy go out to the family and friends of this lady.

"The family have been informed and I sincerely hope that the media will allow them privacy and dignity in their grief."

He added: "The Furness General Hospital is seeing a reduction in new cases but we are still looking after about 100 in-patients.

"Although many of these people are now making good progress we are by no means through this terrible time." The outbreak has been traced to an air-conditioning unit at a council leisure centre.

A council worker has been suspended from duty while public health bosses investigate the outbreak. Legionnaires' disease is a pneumonia-type infection which is fatal in around 15 per cent of cases. The first victim of the outbreak was 88-yearold Richard Macauley, who died at the beginning of the outbreak last week.

Thousands of people in the town are being tested for the disease, although health bosses say that the incidence does now appear to be falling.

Fresh supplies of testing equipment-have been flown in from the United States to ensure that the disease can be contained as much as possible.

The elderly and people with weakened immune systems are particularly at risk from legionnaires' disease, although the Barrow outbreak has affected younger victims as well.

It is most often contracted by inhaling mist from water sources such as cooling towers, whirlpool baths and showers which are contaminated with the legionella pneumophilia bacteria.

Environmental health officials in Barrow-in-Furness were able to trace the suspected source of the outbreak because all the people who were infected had one thing in common - they had all been past the town's Forum 28 council-run civic centre in the days before feeling ill.

Initial investigations have suggested that the air-conditioning unit on the side of the centre had been poorly-maintained or had not been properly disinfected.