Mould in the appartment

Question

One week ago, I discovered mould at the wall of the appartment. In the room of my daughter. The house management treated it superficially and the wall was repapered.
My daughter suffers for months of a sore throat in the morning and often of pain in the joints. We have often been to the doctor, however, he could not find anything.
Question 1: Can the sore throat and the pain in the joints be caused by the mould?
My son, living in the room next to my daughter suffers from CF.
Question 2: Is is sufficient to treat the mould on the wall superficially and to repaper the wall? Are the mould spores eliminated completely by this and can not do any harm to the children? I have been told several times that the mould will come again, as soon as it will get cold and humid again. When is the mould going to be harmful? Only if it is visible as black at the wall or before that?
Sorry, these are more questions, but this is very important to me. I am considering leaving the appartment.
Many thanks for your efforts,
Yours sincerely, a concerned mother.

Answer

Dear "concerned mother",
Mould in the appartment is basically not healthy, neither for a healty person nor especially for a person suffering from CF. The sore throat and the pain in the joints are not likely caused by an exposition to mould. An allergy to mould however, can easily be diagnosed by an allergologist and in case this is positive, this is one reason more to sanify the room of your daughter adequately.
To your son: In his case, mould spores have to be taken really for serious (even if it is the room next door), as quite a number CF patients have an allergy against aspergillus, a mould fungus, or develop one in the course of life, which can further influence the lung negatively. Here, you should take urgently remedial action in all rooms - this is not done by repainting or repapering the wall, because the mould will come back very soon; the appartment has to be renovated from the ground. This should be done by a specialist. In case your house management is not willing to do this, you should consider for one thing to get a reduction of the rent (this increases the pressure to the landlord) and for another thing to leave the appartment.
I hope that I could have helped you a bit.
Yours sincerely,
Prof. Dr. Joachim Bargon

10.11.2008