TB VACCINATIONS are due to resume in Swindon and across Wiltshire.

The tuberculosis jabs have not been administered since the 2001/02 school year.

Nationwide supply problems developed in 2002 when the then manufacturer, pharmaceutical firm Evans, withdrew its stock as a precaution, amid concerns over its shelf life.

In the autumn of that year, Danish firm the Statens Serum Institute took over production and began building up stock.

The resumption of school vaccinations in Swindon comes as instances of the disease in the area continue to rise.

In 1999, there were 18 recorded cases; last year there were 31.

But Dr Mark Evans, communicable disease control consultant with the Wiltshire Health Protection Unit, said: "I do not think there is a significant increase in risk to people who are not vaccinated, although I do think vaccination is prudent.

"For TB to be transmitted, there has to be a close link."

Dr Evans said the TB bacterium, called mycobacterium, is carried in sputum in the lungs, and tends to be passed on only through coughing or close physical contact.

He also said much of the increase in recorded cases was down to it being diagnosed in people arriving from countries where the disease is far more prevalent.

Swindon Primary Care Trust's head of children and family services, Adina Grace, said: "The school nursing service has made arrangements to immunise Year 9 pupils in school during this coming term, as well as any Year 11 pupils who did not receive the immunisation due to absence or ill health during previous programmes.

"This will involve some 2,700 young people."

She said not all areas have a schools vaccination programme for TB.

Oxford, Bath and Bristol, for example, vaccinate only those judged to be at high risk of the disease and the innoculations are given at GPs' surgeries and clinics.

Wiltshire County Council spokesman Adam Butcher said children across the county could also expect the vaccination programme to resume now reserves of vaccine had been acquired.

TB once claimed many lives. Wuthering Heights author Emily Bronte died of it, as did 19th Century poet Coleridge.

The American Lung Association says TB has killed a billion people worldwide in the last 200 years.

After the Second World War patients had to spend a year in a country sanatorium. Now the illness is curable with a six-month course of antibiotics.

Symptoms include weight loss, night sweats and coughing. If left untreated, potentially fatal haemorrhages of the lungs can ensue.

Regions with a high prevalence of the disease include much of Africa and South East Asia, parts of South and Central America, Djibouti and the Yemen in the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe.

Barrie Hudson