Tenants of a housing estate in Berlin say their landlords have failed to keep them properly informed about an outbreak of Legionella bacteria.

In mid-March, health authorities in the Neukölln district of Berlin imposed a shower ban on 332 apartments in the "High-Deck" estate after tests showed elevated levels of the Legionella bacteria that cause Legionnaires' disease, a potentially deadly form of pneumonia.

However, it is not clear how long the contamination was present in the water, and at least one tenant, Brianne Curran, believes that she contracted Legionnaires two months before she was told that the estate had a contamination.

She says her landlord, the state-owned housing company Howoge, was much too slow to keep tenants informed of the dangers after water tests took place in March, and failed to implement containment measures until external pressure was applied.

Curran began experiencing flu-like symptoms in January and endured three weeks of coughing, breathing difficulties and lung pain before those symptoms subsided. However, she only tested for Legionnaire's disease in late March, when she first became aware that her water had been contaminated. The doctor told her she had a "weak positive" result, before mentioning that there had been several other suspected cases of Legionnaire's disease in the area.

It was only two weeks after that, on April 11, that Howoge informed her that the water supply in her apartment had by far the highest concentration of........

© Deutsche Welle