Thousands of secondary school children in Sussex are to be vaccinated against TB.

Community NHS Trusts in West Sussex are making arrangements to restart the programme in their areas as soon as possible, concentrating on the oldest pupils first.

East Sussex, Brighton and Hove Health Authority is also preparing to restart its vaccination programme after the summer term.

Health experts will concentrate on Year 11 pupils to catch them before they leave school and then will move on to those who have already left school.

Many older pupils may have missed their routine vaccination when the programme was suspended across the country in September 1999 because of manufacturing problems suffered by the suppliers with the vaccination.

The immunisation programme is being restarted on the instruction of public health minister Yvette Cooper after an outbreak of the potentially fatal lung disease among secondary school pupils in the Midlands.

A total of 31 cases of TB were confirmed among people connected to Crown Hills Community College, in the Leicester suburb of Evington.

Health chiefs in East and West Sussex will make the oldest pupils a priority to catch them before they leave school.

Once the first "catch-up" phase of the programme is completed and the older children immunised, the normal vaccination of 11 to 15-year-olds in the county will begin.

Health chiefs are emphasising that in most parts of the country TB is still very uncommon.

In 1999 there were 29 cases of TB in West Sussex.