A tu­ber­cu­lo­sis (TB) scare at the Char­lieville AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege has forced its clo­sure for the week as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure for teach­ers and pupils.

TB most com­mon­ly af­fects the lungs but al­so can in­volve al­most any or­gan of the body. TB usu­al­ly can be treat­ed suc­cess­ful­ly with an­tibi­otics.

A teacher at the school told Guardian Me­dia that the clean­er (whose name was not giv­en) died on Sun­day.

The teacher, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said while there was no con­fir­ma­tion by staff that the woman died from TB they un­der­stood that the prin­ci­pal took the ini­tia­tive to close the school for the week as a “pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure.”

The teacher said that the prin­ci­pal made a re­quest to have the en­tire school sani­tised as “the clean­er worked all over the premis­es…so arrange­ments were made for the sani­ti­sa­tion of the en­tire com­pound in­side and out.”

Yes­ter­day, dur­ing a vis­it to the school, which is lo­cat­ed on the north­ern side of the com­pound of the Ha­ji Shafik Ra­haman Ed­u­ca­tion Com­plex, AS­JA Av­enue, John Pe­ter Ex­ten­sion, nei­ther the prin­ci­pal or oth­er mem­bers of staff, were present. There was one ve­hi­cle in the carpark but no one else was seen around. Even the se­cu­ri­ty booth was emp­ty.

How­ev­er, a mem­ber of staff from an­oth­er school lo­cat­ed in the com­plex con­firmed that the school has been closed un­til Fri­day to ac­com­mo­date “spray­ing.”

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “tricky” and added that he could not “give out per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.” Paras­ram said the Min­istry of Health had not giv­en any di­rec­tive for the school’s clo­sure.

Of­fi­cials at the Min­istry of Health con­firmed that the school’s prin­ci­pal is cur­rent­ly li­ais­ing with the Tho­racic Med­ical Di­rec­tor “to en­sure that all pub­lic health in­spec­tions are be­ing done as need be.”

Guardian Me­dia was al­so told by a health of­fi­cial that the clean­er went to the Cau­ra Chest Hos­pi­tal where she had a se­ries of tests done and the re­sults showed that she was not in­fect­ed “at the time and there was no risk of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of stu­dents and teach­ers.”

Dr Lovell Fran­cis, Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion con­firmed in a What­sApp mes­sage that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched and con­firmed the school had been closed af­ter the clean­er’s death.

Asked what steps had been tak­en by the min­istry to prep the school for re­open­ing, Fran­cis stat­ed: “That’s why the school is closed for most of the week.”

He said he could not con­firm the clean­er died from TB but not­ed the Min­istry of Health was as­sist­ing the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry in that re­gard.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh dis­missed the re­port as “false claims” and ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to con­tact the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer.

Deyals­ingh said as far as he was aware the Health Min­istry was spray­ing for mos­qui­toes fol­low­ing a re­quest from the school’s prin­ci­pal.

How is TB spread

A per­son can be­come in­fect­ed with tu­ber­cu­lo­sis bac­te­ria when he or she in­hales minute par­ti­cles of in­fect­ed spu­tum from the air. The bac­te­ria get in­to the air when some­one who has a tu­ber­cu­lo­sis lung in­fec­tion coughs, sneezes, shouts, or spits. You do not get TB by just touch­ing the clothes or shak­ing the hands of some­one who is in­fect­ed. Tu­ber­cu­lo­sis is trans­mit­ted pri­mar­i­ly from per­son to per­son by breath­ing in­fect­ed air dur­ing close con­tact. There is a form of typ­i­cal tu­ber­cu­lo­sis, how­ev­er, that is trans­mit­ted by drink­ing un­pas­teurised milk.

Symp­toms of tu­ber­cu­lo­sis

TB in­fec­tion usu­al­ly oc­curs ini­tial­ly in the up­per part (lobe) of the lungs. The body’s im­mune sys­tem, how­ev­er, can stop the bac­te­ria from con­tin­u­ing to re­pro­duce. Thus, the im­mune sys­tem can make the lung in­fec­tion in­ac­tive. On the oth­er hand, if the body’s im­mune sys­tem can­not con­tain the TB bac­te­ria, the bac­te­ria will re­pro­duce in the lungs and spread else­where in the body. It may take many months from the time the in­fec­tion ini­tial­ly gets in­to the lungs un­til symp­toms de­vel­op. The usu­al symp­toms that oc­cur with an ac­tive TB in­fec­tion are a gen­er­alised tired­ness or weak­ness, weight loss, fever, and night sweats. If the in­fec­tion in the lung wors­ens, then fur­ther symp­toms can in­clude cough­ing, chest pain, cough­ing up of spu­tum (ma­te­r­i­al from the lungs) and/or blood, and short­ness of breath. If the in­fec­tion spreads be­yond the lungs, the symp­toms will de­pend up­on the or­gans in­volved.

Treat­ing TB

A per­son with a pos­i­tive skin test, a nor­mal chest X-ray, and no symp­toms most like­ly has on­ly a few TB germs in an in­ac­tive state and is not con­ta­gious. Nev­er­the­less, treat­ment with an an­tibi­ot­ic may be rec­om­mend­ed for this per­son to pre­vent the TB from turn­ing in­to an ac­tive in­fec­tion. Ac­tive TB is treat­ed with a com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tions. Surgery on the lungs may be in­di­cat­ed to help cure TB when med­ica­tion has failed, but in this day and age, surgery for TB is un­usu­al. Treat­ment with ap­pro­pri­ate an­tibi­otics will usu­al­ly cure the TB. With­out treat­ment, how­ev­er, tu­ber­cu­lo­sis can be a lethal in­fec­tion. There­fore, ear­ly di­ag­no­sis is im­por­tant.