Legionnaire Disease Outbreak in Britain Claims 31st Life

The world’s deadliest recorded outbreak of legionnaires’ disease claimed its 31st victim in central England on Wednesday, and two other deaths linked to the illness were reported elsewhere in Britain, health authorities said.

An 82-year-old woman died in a hospital in the central industrial town of Stafford, where 30 others have died in three weeks. Officials said four more cases have been found, bringing the total number to 139.

The source of the outbreak is believed to be the air conditioning system at a Stafford hospital’s outpatient clinic.

Legionnaires’ disease takes its name from the first recorded outbreak, which killed 29 people attending an American Legion convention in Philadelphia in 1976. The bacteria develop in water and can be carried through pipes or as vapor in air systems. The symptoms are similar to pneumonia and affect mainly the elderly.

The two other deaths reported Wednesday were in the southern cities of Bristol and Portsmouth, but doctors said they were not linked with the Stafford outbreak.

Health officials in Bristol said that tests carried out on a 64-year-old nurse who died last week showed she had legionnaires’ disease, as well as kidney failure.

In Portsmouth, 120 patients at St. Mary’s Hospital were being moved so seven wards and three operating rooms could be disinfected after two cases of the disease, one of them fatal, were reported there in the last month.

About 200 people contract legionnaires’ disease in Britain each year, and about 20 of them die, according to government health statistics.