KEY POINTS:
Public health officials will test up to 35 friends, family, workmates and fellow patients of the tuberculosis victim who died in Auckland City Hospital recently for the disease.
The woman died several weeks ago after spending weeks at the hospital for an unknown respiratory illness.
Only after her
death was it discovered that she was infected with an extremely rare, aggressive and highly contagious form of TB.
Auckland Regional Public Health Service investigations have focused on her contact with friends and family and narrowed down those people who were at risk of having the disease.
More than 200 hospital staff who had sustained contact with patient have also been called in for testing.
Those being tested will now be given the Mantoux tuberculosis skin test and, if results come back positive, will have further tests, including chest x-rays.
If those tests confirm TB, treatment will follow - involving several months of multiple antibiotics.
Any already showing symptoms of TB will go straight into the second round of tests and, if needed, treatment.
Symptoms include fever, rapid unexplained weight loss and a constant cough which brings up sputum - mucus or phlegm mixed with saliva. Often that sputum is tinged with blood.
It was not expected every one of those to be tested would have contracted the disease, the service's medical officer of health, Dr Cathy Pikholz, said yesterday.
Despite recent media coverage of local TB cases, New Zealand was not in the midst of a tuberculosis resurgence, Dr Pikholz said.
Tuberculosis rates had remained fairly steady over the past 20 years and in the past two years had dropped - both nationally and in Auckland.
Last year, 54 cases of TB were reported in the Auckland District Health Board's region, but Dr Pikholz would not say which suburbs the bulk of TB cases were found in.
She said the disease was seen throughout the entire greater Auckland region, although it was well known tuberculosis was more common in areas of poverty and overcrowding.
New Zealand no longer vaccinated the entire population as the occurrence of TB was too small to justify it, she said. But those deemed at risk still received the vaccine.
"At risk" was defined in the Ministry of Health's 2006 Immunisation Handbook as being:
* Less than 5 years old and having had contact with active TB cases
* Immigrants less than 5 from high-incidence countries
* Healthcare workers, depending on their risk of exposure
* People exposed to animals that are likely to be infected.
