Legionella outbreak in the health department

BY PHIL SHANNON

CANBERRA — The federal Department of Health and Aged Care has been publicly embarrassed by a recent outbreak of legionella in one of its Canberra buildings.

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) reports that staff in the Alexander building in the Woden area, which houses over 600 public servants, have been shocked to discover that the building they work in has a dangerously high level of the potentially fatal legionella bacterium in one of its cooling towers.

Staff are furious that they were not informed of the dangerous level of legionella bacterium for well over a month after its detection on December 20.

The health and aged care department, as the building tenant, claims it was not informed by the building owners until the end of January, but there is considerable concern among staff that the department had no procedures in place requiring that staff be immediately notified of any situation that could exposure them to the deadly disease. So far, two workers have reported flu-like symptoms consistent with legionnaire's disease but this has not yet been confirmed as the cause.

The CPSU reacted quickly to the health threat, winning commitments from departmental management that it would not oppose compensation claims stemming from the incident, that it would pay for staff to be medically tested for the presence of legionnaire's disease, and that procedures would be established to minimise the chance of similar outbreaks in the future and to ensure prompt notification if such a situation should arise again.

On February 1, the CPSU collected signatures from workers in the building expressing strong concern about the incident and demanding the department agree to new monitoring procedures as a matter of extreme urgency. Union and non-union staff alike responded eagerly to the petition. Cleaning procedures and further testing for legionella bacteria are currently being undertaken.

[Phil Shannon is a CPSU workplace delegate in the Alexander building, the Department of Health and Aged Care, in Canberra]

From GLW issue 435