TUBERCULOSIS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 321, 7 September 1932, Page 3

TUBERCULOSIS

VIGOROUS MEASURES NEEDED TO REDUCE DEATH RATE. Christchurch, Friday. To the extent of saying that if still . more vigorous measures were taken i to deal with tuberculosis in New Zealand in the way of finding early cases and providing for their treatment, and in ensuring the proper segregation of all advanced cases, the death rate could be considerably reduced, Dr. I. C. Macintyre, medical superintendent of the Cashmere sanatoria, agreed today with the assertion of Mr. G. MacLean, a North Island sanatorium superintendent, that there was some room for improvement in the present system. i He thought, however, that Dr. MacLean was making a very big staternent when he elaimed that if a "proper system" of treatment was carried out tuberculosis would disappear from New Zealand in one generation. The South Island was tackling tuberculosis in a better fashion than the Nofth Island, Dr. Macintyre said. Not all advanced cases of tuberculosis were properly segregated, Dr. Macintyre explained. Some of them remained at home, to spread the disease. Some sufferers refused to enter a sanatorium, and in some parts of the North' Island there were not, in any case, facilities for treatment to he given. "Hospital boards in the South Island, at any rate, are doing their utmost to assist in combating tuberculosis," he continued. "It can be said that in Christchurch and Dunedin, tuberculosis is being attended to pretty well. Treatment is being given to all who desire it, and there are facilities for early diagnosis. "There would be sufficient hospital accommodation here to support any more extensive system of dealing with tuberculosis than the present one, but the North' Island is, comparatively speaking,' lacking in such accommodation. It always has been behind the South Island in this respect." The extent of the fall in the tuberculosis death rate in New Zealand — the lowest in the world — in the last 25 years, showed that the methods adopted, and the system, were successful, Dr. Macintyre added. He did. not think that Dr. MacLean's "suggestion of a lay organisation to co-operate with the medical profession in attempting to bring about the adop>tion of "an adequate system of treatment" was a very useful one. Such an organisation would do no harm, but it would probably not do much good.