MEDICAL intervention by Swindon Council could have prevented a potentially lethal outbreak of tuberculosis in the town.

Council solicitor Phillip Wirth appeared before town magistrates to update them on the progress of 51-year-old Swindon mum-of-two Kathleen Collins, who is recovering from treatment for TB after being placed into hospital care.

Mr Wirth said Mrs Collins came to the notice of Wiltshire Health Authority when she was aged 24, when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

He told the court: "She has never accepted that diagnosis and while tuberculosis can be treated by drugs, without the patient being put into hospital or quarantine, it is provided the person cooperates with treatment.

"The danger is, when treatment is defaulted on, a system of resistance builds up to drugs and the patient becomes at serious risk, becoming highly infectious."

Mr Wirth said that Dr Bharat Pankhania, consultant in communicable diseases at Wiltshire Health Authority, approached Swindon Council to have Mrs Collins removed from home and treated at Princess Margaret Hospital.

On November 5 last year, Mr Wirth said, tests at PMH revealed she was not cured and she was "in an infectious state".

Mr Wirth said: "It was thought she may have developed multi-drug resistance and approval was given for her to go to a negative pressure chamber unit because she was a threat to those treating her at PMH and those coming into the hospital."

On December 5, Mr Wirth said, he went to Horseferry Magistrates Court in London to apply for Mrs Collins to be detained for treatment at St Mary's Hospital.

"She's been there since then," Mr Wirth said. "She has been undergoing treatment successfully and she is now able to be treated in a hospital bed in her locality."

Magistrates approved an order, made under the Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act, 1984, for Mrs Collins to be returned from St Mary's Hospital to PMH.

Mr Wirth added: "She has been undergoing tests. We can only ask for the requisite amount it allows us to detain her under an order of the court until such time as she has been cured."

In May 2000, we revealled how reported cases of the "killer cough" of tuberculosis had increased for the first time in 50 years.

But although cases elsewhere in the country were on the up, people living in Swindon were among the safest in the country.