IMMIGRANTS living in Swindon are most likely to suffer from tuberculosis, a Primary Care Trust report has warned.

The news comes as Swindon PCT announced plans for a new community-based TB service to be introduced in the town in light of figures that show Swindon have double the cases of TB than the South West average.

The most recent figures, gathered in 2006, show that for every 100,000 people in Swindon there are 11.3 cases of tuberculosis compared to the regional average which is 5.6 cases per 100,000.

Tricia Neville of the Local Patient Involvement Network (LINk) said it was immoral landlords who were partly to blame for the poor health of immigrants in the town.

Mrs Neville said: “The landlords are actually exploiting the people who are living there by not making repairs. One person we’ve been to visit didn’t even have central heating during the winter.

“There is a lot of negligence of the housing side of it because the landlords are taking advantage of those who are foreign because they don’t know about British housing legislation. there are a lot of underlying issues here that need to be addressed.”

While the rates remain lower than the Department of Health risk threshold of 40, a limit that would trigger the introduction of a BCG vaccination programme in Swindon, the Primary Care Trust is introducing the TB treatment service to screen residents for the condition and treat those carrying it.

In a report presented to Swindon Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, acting head of health and equalities Frances Mayes said the condition mainly affects those moving into Swindon from countries where tuberculosis is still a serious issue.

“Most of the cases – 70 per cent – were of black African or Indian sub-continent origin, 70 per cent of whom were not born in the UK,” she said.

“Over a five-year period from 2003 to 2007, less than 20 per cent of people diagnosed with TB were of White British ethnic origin.

“Of the Swindon cases, among whom the date of entry into the UK was known, the majority had arrived in the UK within the past seven years and over 90 per cent had not received treatment for tuberculosis.”

The costs involved in the proposed service are yet to be announced but if implemented the programme will provide community-based, specialist nurses or health visitors, working in partnership with the adult respiratory consultant Mark Juniper at Great Western Hospital to prevent, control and treat TB in Swindon.

Patients with suspected cases will be referred to Dr Juniper and details of new patients will be passed to a community TB nurse who will be responsible for risk assessments.

The TB nurse will be in regular contact with the patients informing them about the condition and will review the patient once a month throughout their treatment and monitor any potential symptoms.

At the moment treatment for tuberculosis is mostly based at Great Western Hospital, with patients suspected as suffering from tuberculosis or with confirmed cases referred to the adult respiratory consultant Mark Juniper at Great Western Hospital.

However the Primary Care Trust’s report said that there is no existing arrangements in place for following up with TB sufferers in the community, no systematic method for screening new residents to Swindon and no referral system between the town’s acute trusts, community health visitors, primary care practitioners or the Health protection Unit.

Mrs Mayes added that there would be a strong economic benefit in setting up a community TB treatment scheme.

Poor management or lack of diagnosis for TB can lead to a drug resistant strain of the illness, making it harder - and more costly - to treat.

“Drug resistant TB costs between £50,000 and £70,000 per patient, whereas non-drug resistant tuberculosis can cost less than £5,000 and at the moment one per cent of TB cases in the UK are multi-drug resistant,” she said.

“The proposed service would help reduce the number of cases of active TB as well as the subsequent cost of treatment.”