As the new intake of Year 7’s settled into life at their boarding school in West Yorkshire, members of the West Yorkshire Health Protection Team and the local TB services embarked on planning the yearly TB awareness raising session. The students who attend the school are generally from high-risk populations, with families living in high TB prevalence areas.
The awareness session was run as 3 ‘carousel’ sessions that the students attended. The first included a short presentation to the pupils around: what is TB; how TB can be caught; signs and symptoms of TB infections; risk factors for TB; how TB is treated; and what can be done to prevent the spread of TB. This was followed by a quiz to reinforce the key learning points for the presentation. Finally the pupils had an opportunity to ask questions to the local TB nurses about TB or the myths they’d heard relating to TB! Over the course of the afternoon over 100 pupils received information, ‘fun facts’ and leaflets about TB.
Such sessions have been successfully run and well received for a number of years following a large scale screening exercise, in which over 500 pupils and teachers of the school were screened, after a case of smear positive pulmonary TB was identified in the setting. On the back of this situation it was considered that yearly TB awareness raising sessions would be beneficial for pupils as they enter the school at Year 7 and for those leaving at Year 13.
Members of the West Yorkshire Health Protection Team work closely across the health economy with those involved with TB control and have established good relationships with key partners in this field.
Helen Friend, West Yorkshire Health Protection Team, PHE Yorkshire & the Humber
