One of the country's busiest hospitals, which was originally opened as a sanatorium to treat people with tuberculosis (TB), is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, Dublin, was opened in 1955, when it was known as James Connolly Memorial Hospital. It was made up of a large number of separate units set in rural parkland in order to ensure that TB patients were isolated.

TB is a serious bacterial disease that usually affects the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body such as the glands. Symptoms can include fever, coughing, weight loss and blood in the phlegm.

According to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC), cases of the disease have been declining steadily in Ireland since the mid-20th century. There were nearly 7,000 cases a year in the early 1950s, but in recent years, only a few hundred cases per year have been notified. This is largely due to the availability of the BCG vaccine, which protects against the disease.

In May 1948, the then-Minister for Heath, Noel Browne, warned that he was ‘faced with a waiting list of over a thousand patients' who needed treatment in a sanatorium. At that time, TB was responsible for more than half of all deaths in people aged 25-35 years.

In that same year, Sisk Builders were awarded the country's first million pound building contract, to build sanatoria in Blanchardstown, Cork and Galway.

James Connolly Memorial Hospital opened in 1955, providing care for 530 patients. Over the following years, TB patients from other hospitals were transferred there, however by the early 1970s, TB was declining and the last remaining TB patients were transferred to Peamont Hospital.

In 1971, the hospital was established as a general hospital and it was officially opened as such in 1973.

Following construction of a new hospital building, the hospital was officially renamed Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown in 2005. It has undergone extensive renovations and building work over the years and around 900 staff currently provide emergency, medical, surgical, residential care, day care, outpatient, diagnostic, clinical therapies and support services to a catchment population of over 330,000.

The hospital has 351 beds and last year alone, its Emergency Department dealt with over 33,600 patient presentations.

"This is a very special occasion to pay tribute to all of the men and women who have worked here over the past 60 years, the 900 staff working here today and the thousands who went before us - the medical staff, the porters and cleaners, medical scientists, management, nurses, therapists and all the support staff," commented Health Minister, Leo Varadkar, who himself worked at the hospital in 2004 and 2005.