TUBERCULOSIS.

Shannon News, 25 March 1927, Page 3

TUBERCULOSIS.

MUST CHECK IT IN CHILDHOOD. Mr. W. Wallace, chairman of the Auckland Hospital Board, and .chairman of the ..recent -conference of Hospital Boards, discussing Dr. G. J. Blackmore ’s address on tuberculosis, said that figures given by Dr. Valintine showed that notifications of tuberculosis in the North Island and the South Island were about the same.

Dr. Blackmore’s reply to that statement is that the notification figures are absolutely valueless. “The disease,” he said, “is much less likely to' be notified where it is not looked for than where it is looked for as we look for it in the South Island.”

Speaking of the treatment of children,, Dr. Blackmore said:“Tuberculosis is essentially a disease of childhood —that it to say, it is in childhood that nearly all infection takes place. The disease we meet with in adult life is in the vast majority of eases merely the fresh lighting up of a disease which was contracted in childhood, and, after a longer or shorter time, became quiescent, but was not actually killed. The disease is due to the entry into the body of a special geim. The body has a remarkable defensive system against attack by germs or other harmful agents, and no sooner do the germs of tuberculosis enter the system than they are at once attacked. In many cases they are killed outright; in others they are kept on the run f6r some time before they are killed; in a few cases the germs succeed in killing their attackers, and then they settle down in some spot and try to destroy the tissues, but at this stage they are attacked by another force, which, failing, in its attempts to destroy the invaders, proceeds to wab them up. ' “Infection takes place 5 when the germs enter the -body, but actual disease is not present until the germs settle down and start tb destroy, and there may be a considerable interval be-, tween the time of infection and the onset of disease; Even when disease does begin it may never become active disease. The walling-in process often causes it to become latent, sometimes for years, sometimes for life, and in probably the majority of cases it dies out without any extension having taken place. “The first spot of disease is not as big as a pin ’s head, and it is generally found somewhere in the glands, which form the first line of defence against tuberculosis. It is obvious that that is the time when we should attack and destroy it, before it has had time to do any harm. We know, or can find out, when infection has taken place,, yet, knowing that.. instead of attacking the enemy while its .toothold is still insecure, we wait until it has entrenched itself, has marshalled all its forces, and is laying waste the country, before we take the field against it —a foolish, disastrous, and wicked policy. “We have extremely delicate tests for finding out when tuberculosis infection has taken place, and when the Department of School Hygiene told me that' it "proposed to apply the test to school children, as had been done in several other countries, to find out how many of the children in New Zealand were infected, it seemed to me a truly magnificent opportunity to try and do throughout New Zealand what no other country has ever done on a big scale, namely, try to prevent the infection of childhood from ever becoming the destructive disease of adult life, and I most strongly recommended that the Department should not. stop short when infection had been proved, but should at once proceed to take steps to destray the infection, to do throughout the schools in New Zealand what we are trying to do for the children of' T.B. parents in cur Fresh Air Home at Cashmere.

“The procedure is to rub into the body a small portion of a special ointment, which, is known to-have a powerful influence in preventing the results of infection from taking place, and in immunising the children against further attacks. In addition, the parents were to be given explicit directions as to how the children were to live, about their sleeping in the open air, the kind of food they were to take, and how they were to be given adequate rest, as I am convinced that many children are haying their resistance, to tuberculosis broken down through lack of sufficient resi and sleep during the twenty-four hours. “I also proposed that these infected children should be taught in open-air schools or under open-air conditions, (hat the school medical officers should pay special attention to these children during their school life, and that after leaving school they should be kept under observation until they become adults by a special Child Welfare Department to be attached to the Tuberculosis Dispensary. Shortly, the children were to be dealt with in precisely the same way as we deal with the children in the Fresh Air Home.

‘ ‘ This mater of dealing with children while at school does not concern the hospital authorities at present, but, as I pointed out to the Hospital Boards Conference, it will vitally affect the boards in a few years, because tuberculosis of the lungs, which is what the sanatoriums deal with, is merely the terminal stage of a disease which in nearly all cases began in childhood.

“Of all people who die of tuberculosis, 75 per cent, die of tuberculosis of the lungs, and the checking of the infection in childhood means the prevention of tuberculosis of the lungs in adult life. ’ ’