A top Government nurse yesterday warned that Bermuda could see a steep rise in the number of cases of the potential killer disease TB.

Ms Rhonda Daniels, an expert in epidemics, said: "We have the potential for getting a lot of cases.'' She added the two main reasons to fear the wholesale return of the disease to the Islands were the increase in HIV/AIDS infection and increased travel.

The Government nurse epidemiologist said HIV positive people have a weak immune system which makes them far more likely to come down with diseases like TB.

In addition, increased world travel by Bermudians could bring them into contact with people who have migrated from TB hotspots across the globe.

She said: "Everybody thought that TB was eradicated from the world. There is more homelessness and people travelling from parts of the world where it's endemic.

"Bermudians now have access to these countries abroad -- we're being bombarded more with TB.'' The Department of Health has recorded two cases of TB so far this year, compared to five in 1994.

Ms. Daniels said that some of last year's cases were examples of diseases attacking an HIV-positive person whose immune system was weakened, but others were in otherwise healthy people, both foreign.

Now Bermudian doctors have been issued with a special factsheet from the World Health Organisation alerting them to the growing problem of TB.

The disease is spread through the air -- when infectious people cough, sneeze, talk or spit, the TB germs are propelled into the atmosphere, where they can remain suspended for hours.

Left untreated, an infected person is likely to infect 12-15 people in the space of a year.

But only a tiny fraction -- five to ten percent -- of people infected with the disease become ill or infectious because their immune system "walls off'' the infection.