CONQUERING DISEASE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5398, 11 March 1929, Page 2

CONQUERING DISEASE.

FIGHT AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS.

STEADY FALL IN DEATH RATE-

Steadily and surely, year by year, the frightened proportions the tuberculosis scare ar.c shrinking in New Zealand, as in most countries of. the; world. The year 1928 will show the lowest death rate; on rpcord for this disease. This year hundreds of persons are alive and well who wbuld have died from tuberculosis had the death rate of 1918 still prevailed. The prophecy of a prominent statistician is that within the next half-century, or even less, tuber-, culesis will be “only one of the relatively minor cases of. dfeafih.” The New Zealand Official Year Book says : “Tuberculosis takes sixth place in point of the number of deaths resulting therefrom during 1927. Each of the four, years preceding 1926 in its turn established a ne,w’ record in low ratejs of. mortality f,or this disease. In 1918 7.54 persons in every 10,000 died from tuberculosis, while in 1927 the rate was 4.86, a gratifying drop. Far the past thirty years the antituberculosis campaign has been active in America, and the result of the movement is the; cutting, of. the deathrate from this cause about 60 per cent., thus saving the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of people.

No one thirty years ago, when the anti-tuberculosis campaign w«s actively launched, in America, would have dared to prophesy any such achievement as has actually o.ccurred in this short interval. At that time the death-rate from tuberculosis was close to three; times as high as it' is now, and this disease; was the first of the causes of death. But with the establishment of the National Tuberculosis Association and the launching of local societies all over the country the mortality from the disease began to fall at a remarkably fast rate; which has not only continued, but accelerated its velocity with time. No one can realise fully what this drop in tuberculosis has meant in bettering the conditions of- life. Tuberculosis, claims its victims at a comparatively early age, and many of its victim? would mave beqn young men with growing fraanilies.

The success of. the tuberculosis campaign is the most outstanding example of the effectiveness of the public health movement, and by learning, how to control tuberculosis the greatest single factor in producing poverty and misery has been greatly cheeked.