
By: PA, The Independent
Monday, 28 July 2008
Many British people were locked up for life at a mental hospital because they were typhoid carriers, it was reported today.
At least 43 women were detained at Long Grove asylum in Epsom, Surrey, between 1907 and the facility’s closure in 1992, according to the BBC.
Despite having recovered from the disease, they were held because they still carried the bacterium, deemed to be a public health risk, the corporation’s Newsnight programme claims.
After antibiotic treatments emerged in the 1950s, the women continued to be detained but on mental health grounds, it is claimed.
Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, told the BBC: “They (the detained women) certainly were infectious; they had the potential to spread the infection to others if they had poor hygiene and they were preparing food and all that type of thing. But as a public health risk, I think they were basically targeted and there was a lot of over-exaggeration about the threat they posed.”
- Typhoid fever is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with faeces from an infected person.
- The disease is characterised by a prolonged fever, as high as 40C, sweating, gastroenteritis, and diarrhoea.
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