Legionnaires' patients recovering

Three men with Legionnaires' disease at a hospital in Shropshire are said to be on the mend.

The men, aged in their 40s and 50s, and from Oswestry and Whitchurch, and Montgomery, Powys, are being treated at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

One has been taken out of intensive care and the others are said to be improving. Health experts do not believe the cases are linked.

A fourth patient at the hospital contracted the disease abroad.

Flu-like symptoms

Dr Rob Carr, consultant in communicable disease control at the Health Protection Agency, earlier said he was cautiously optimistic that the men who contracted the disease locally did not get it from the same source.

Legionnaires' disease is most often contracted by inhaling mist from water sources such as whirlpool baths, showers, and cooling towers.

It cannot be passed from one human to another.

The most common cause of the disease is contaminated air conditioning systems.

Patients show flu-like symptoms in the early stages which can develop into fever with breathing difficulties following. It is fatal in 5-15% of cases.