Forty-three women who tested positive for the bacterial disease, typhoid, were locked up in a British asylum for decades between 1907 and 1992 even though they were cured of the disease, the BBC reported.
Most of the women died in solitary confinement at the Long Grove asylum in Epsom, in southern England, it said.
Most were given antibiotics to treat the disease, but according to two volumes of records discovered in the ruins of the hospital, and nurses who spoke to the network, some were driven mad by their prolonged detentions. The hospital closed in 1992.
Even after they received antibiotics, records showed the women continued to be detained on mental health grounds.
The report did not indicate why the cases referred to were all female.
Some of the women were locked in single rooms where they had no visitors and little social interaction, former nurses told the BBC.
A ward manager who worked at Long Grove for 40 years, Jeanie Kennett, said, ''Life was pretty tough; they were seen as objects.''
Former ward worker May Heffernan told the BBC staff members refused to go inside the isolation ward.
In a response to the report, the Department of Health said it was not official health policy to treat people that way. ''There was not, and never has been, a policy of incarcerating anyone, in this context,'' the department said.
It said there was long-standing legislation that allowed magistrates to order people detained in a hospital if they suffered from a highly infectious and dangerous disease, and if proper precautions against infecting others would not be taken.
Typhoid, caused by bacteria and often spread through contaminated water, was a deadly threat for centuries until the development of antibiotics and vaccines in the 20th century. Symptoms include fever, headache, diarrhoea, rose-coloured spots on the chest, and an enlarged liver and spleen. Though the disease has essentially been wiped out in developed countries, outbreaks still occur in the developing world. There are an estimated 17 million cases every year.
It was not possible to confirm the BBC report independently.
Emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University in Scotland Hugh Pennington said the women probably posed a low health risk.
''I think when the carriage of typhoid was discovered way toward the beginning of the 20th century, it was thought to be a really bad problem,'' he said. ''Nowadays it isn't an issue in this country at all.''
Professor Pennington said many of the carriers would have been treated the same if they had leprosy, another disease that was not easily transmitted. ''Once you've been locked up in a mental hospital ... sometimes it's quite difficult to get out,'' he said. ''Carrying this stigma on top of your mental illness ... some of these people probably would have been abandoned by their families.'' AP
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