EXCLUSIVE: Woman has bovine TB
The patient, who has not been identified but is believed to be a veterinary nurse, is undergoing treatment for the serious respiratory infection.
It is understood that her daughter and the family dog have also been tested for the disease.
A spokesman for the Health Protection Agency, which monitors public health, yesterday confirmed the case to the WMN.
Bovine TB (BTB) is the variant of the "tubercle" bacteria which many animals are susceptible to, but which commonly affects cattle. It is rare for a human to catch it. Last year, just two people in the South West – from Bristol and Wiltshire down to the Isles of Scilly – contracted it. In the same area in 2006, a total of six people were infected.
The spokesman said there was no cause to panic. "The current risk posed by bovine TB to human health in the UK is considered negligible," she said.
According to experts, year on year increases of as much as 15 per cent have been reported in bovine TB.
But while cases in cattle have been spiralling, those among humans have remained steady.
In the past 14 years, 44 people have been confirmed as having the disease in the South West, which represents a tenth of the national figure for the same period.
Jan Rowe, NFU spokesman on BTB, said those in direct contact with livestock, such as herdsman and vets, would be at risk.
"There is always a risk with people who work closely with cattle of possibly picking this up. It is very rare but it has happened in the past."
The human form of TB is responsible for an estimated 1.6 million deaths each year, mainly in the developing world. It is curable with a six-month course of antibiotics.
"TB is a strange disease," said Mr Rowe. "There is virtually no difference in the symptoms and behaviour [between animals and humans]. The treatment would be exactly the same."
BTB can occur in many animals, but badgers are seen to be the main carriers in the wild. The threat they pose to livestock, which have to be destroyed if infected, has led farmers to call for a mass cull of badgers – a plea controversially rejected by the Government.
Mr Rowe said it was estimated that up to 50 per cent of the wild badger population was infected with TB. "They are the main reservoir of the disease in the wild," he said.
However, he was keen to point out that there was absolutely no risk of Bovine TB going into the food chain due to pasteurisation and stringent inspection controls.
Andy Biggs, a Tiverton-based vet and British Cattle Veterinary Association spokesman on the subject, said the Cornish woman infected with BTB might have picked it up from a number of different sources.
He said it was possible to catch it from direct contact with cattle, however, because of early testing of herds this was unusual.
"One possibility is that the dog has come across a dead badger and the family has been infected," he said. "It is also possible that the nurse has come across a cow with TB in the course of her work."
The TB bacillus cannot survive the pasteurisation process, so cannot be passed on through dairy products such as milk. Equally, Mr Biggs said all meat is rigorously inspected and the infection could not be passed on in that way.
He said research had shown that most people infected with BTB had actually caught the disease from another human, who was usually infected decades ago before modern safeguards were in place.
He said BTB was on the rise, with around 27,000 cases reported last year. If that trend continues, it could be an estimated 40,000 cases this year.
Yet this has not been reflected in cases of humans being infected with the bovine strain. "Human transmission cases are almost negligable in terms of numbers," he said.
