TUBERCULOSIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1940, Page 3

TUBERCULOSIS.

NATIONAL PROBLEM. TEN DEATHS A WEEK. DANGERS OF IHFECTION. (From Our Correspondent.) PALMERSTON NORTH, Sunday. Stating that he could see no real difference between slaying a person by the dissemination of lethal germs and.by the administration of poison, Dr. R. S. R. Francis, medical superintendent of the Otaki Sanatorium, made a forceful appeal during an address on the ravages of tuberculosis in New Zealand. He stated there was no doubt that if the Health Department were to insist on tuberculosis being dealt with as a dangerous infectious disease and tackled it with the same courage and energy as it did emailpox and typhoid, demanding the same care against the spread of infection, the numbers who died from the malady would be greatly reduced. Striking figures were quoted, by Dr. Francis to show the seriousness of the situation. For 12 weeks from the begin ning of December last there <vere cases of notifiable diseases, of v hich i- s were tuberculosis cases, repress nuiv 3i per cent. Deaths during the saa*s period from notifiable diseases numbered 143, <-< which 126 were from tuberculosis, e«,mailing 88 per cent. There were 10 deaths a week from this disease. There were legal powers to compel cases to be «?nt to hospital, but nonsensical as it might seem there was no power to make the patients stay there. What was the use of sending cases to hospital when they could sign a form next day to state that they were leaving, but against the advice of the medical superintendent. Dealing with steps necessary to prevent the spread of the disease, Dr. Francis said that indiscriminate expectoration should be a crime. Were beer glasses sterilised in hotel bars? An infectious case who took no precautions should be regarded as a potential slayer of innocent lives. He added that he had in mind a case where a charge of manslaughter could conceivably have been laid. True, the means was a germ, but that was a noxious substance, even if slower in its action than arsenic or strychnine.