THE LONG-AWAITED report into last year’s E. coli 0157 outbreak at a nursery in Dunfermline is due to be published tomorrow.

Five children who attended the Careshare Nursery in Halbeath ended up critically ill in hospital with kidney failure after catching the potentially deadly infection.

Nine other people, all of whom had links to the privately-run nursery, became ill in the outbreak, which began in May of last year.

All of those infected went on to make a good recovery.

The outbreak forced the nursery to close for three weeks and led to dozens of people being screened in one of the biggest health scares of its kind in Fife.

Despite the actions of the outbreak control team, which included public health consultants from NHS Fife and environmental health officers from Fife Council, no one has been able to say for sure what caused it.

Exactly what the NHS Fife report will say is not known.

The E. coli infection can be spread by consuming contaminated food, milk or water and it is possible to catch the germ from an infected person.

It has an incubation period of anything from a day to two weeks and symptoms include sickness, diarrhoea, stomach pain and fever.

Careshare closed while the source of the infection was investigated and the building was thoroughly cleaned before the nursery was able to reopen three weeks later.

The nursery, on Lauder College’s Halbeath campus in Dunfermline, was opened in August 2005 and looks after about 100 children aged between six weeks and five years.

Health Protection Scotland announced earlier this year it was to carry out an investigation into the 42% rise in the number of E. coli 0157 cases last year, including the outbreak in Dunfermline.