Prisoners and prison officers in Arbour Hill prison in Dublin are to be screened for tuberculosis following the discovery that an inmate is infected with the disease. The Department of Justice confirmed the prisoner, a Nigerian national, has been admitted to Peamount Hospital for treatment.
TB is a notifiable disease and once informed of the prisoner's illness the Eastern Health Board decided to screen, using a mobile unit. The programme begins this morning in the prison, which has 140 prisoners and more than 100 staff. A Department of Justice spokesman said yesterday the move was "purely precautionary".
It is not known what form of TB the man is infected with. A new form of the disease, resistant to most current drug therapies and described as "virtually incurable" in developing countries, has been found in Irish patients. Up to 10 cases of multi-drug-resistant TB are detected in the State each year, according to Dr Luke Clancy, a leading Irish TB specialist.
Mr Tom Hoare, general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, said he urged association members to co-operate with the programme. He told The Irish Times there was a protocol in place for contagious diseases in prisons.
"With this latest move we will see if there has been any change in the risk factor for staff since the last screening was carried out around five years ago. The majority of prisoners we would come into contact with are drug abusers, which puts them in a high risk group for TB. Every new recruit to the prison service is now screened." In the last programme no prison officer was found to be infected, he said.