Fighting the waterborne menace.

Although only around 400 cases are reported annually to the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency (HPA), climate change, and thus warmer cold water supplies entering hospitals, the bacterium's apparent ability to mutate, and the considerable challenge of properly monitoring, and successfully identifying and addressing, all potential infection sources on a large hospital estate mean an increasing risk of hospital patients acquiring the potentially deadly waterborne infection, Legionnaires' disease. This was the warning from a top U.K. microbiologist at a recent "waterborne infection masterclass" organised by specialist water filtration product supplier Pall Medical in Antwerp. Jonathan Baillie reports.