CURING CONSUMPTION.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5430, 29 May 1929, Page 3

CURING CONSUMPTION.

DEATH‘RATE DOWN BY HALF. FORTY YEARS’ EFFORT. Conquest and cure of tuberculosis in its early stages is an accomplished fact, according to Dr. F. Leonard Keith, medical officer at Bethnal Green. Lecuring at the Winter School for Health Visitors and School Nurses, at Bedford College for Women, London, Dr., Keith stated that the death-rate from tuberculosis had dropped 40 or 50 per cent, in the last 40 years. “If,” he continued, “we find a case in an early stage—and by modern diagnostic methods this can easily be detected, provided people will come to us—the disease is quite curable.” The death-rate in women has improved more than in men. “But this deathrate has changed not only in sex, but in age, and death now tends to be in the younger periods of life rather than in the middle-aged,” he added. He the decline in mortality very largely to the improved standards of modern living. Where wages were lowest the death-rate was highest Dr. Keith defined the five great barriers which are-still to be broken down as :— “Defective notification since the ascertaining of cases is both incomplete and in many instances too late. “Poverty. “Bad housing conditions, which reduce the convalescent’s chance of recovery and facilitate the spread of the disease among the family. f “Milk, the stable food of childhood, may contain living tuberculosis bacilli, for which pasteurisation would be an effective Safeguard ; and “The industrial barrier, creating the difficulty of reabsbrbing into industry persons capable of only part-time employment, and then but intermittently.” There was a good deal of unnecessary nervousness on the part of many people over tuberculosis, remarked Dr. Keith. The majority of people who had the disease were not infectious ; the publicity about it should dwell not so much- on its risks as its curability if taken in time.