TUBERCULOSIS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19940, 29 May 1930, Page 5

TUBERCULOSIS.

GROUP SYSTEM OF TREATMENT.

REPORT TO HOSPITAL BOARD.

After a visit to the other centres in the group, Dr. I. C. Macintyre presented a report on the group system of dealing with tuberculosis to yesterday's meeting of the North Canterbury Hospital Board. ''ln the great majority of cases tuberculosis infection takes place inside the home," stated the report. "In other words, it is a domestic disease, and if we wish to try to prevent its spread it is necessary to attack the enemy in his own territory—the home of the consumptive. To do this we must send a specially-trained person into that home to advise the occupants as to what they should, and should not do.

"The centre from which this attack is made is the dispensary. I realise that it is not possible to establish such an elaborate scheme in the smaller towns, as the population would not warrant it, but 1 would strongly advise that a trained nurse from each hospital, preferably one who is likely to stay for some time, should be given part-time tuberculosis work in conjunction with her ordinary hospital duties. This would not entail any great amount of work, which would vary of course, according to the size of the town. She could be trained in Christchurch and could live«at the nurses' home at the Sanatorium, thereby saving her board and lodging. The period of training would be about three or four weeks. "It is our practice in Christchurch to admit patients as soen as their maintenance form has been completed, and it is then sent in to the Hospital Board Office. I would suggest that when patients are seen in their own districts, the necessary arrangements be made by the patient direct with the secretary, and that he should not be admitted until I have been notified by the secretary that this has been done.

"But if a patient is seen by me m Christchurch it would be more satisfactory if I were permitted to take him into the sanatorium at once, provided he fills up the maintenance form and hands it to me. I would then immediately send it in to the secretary of the Board in the district from which he comes. Otherwise there may be considerable delay in the patients' admission ; it may mean that he .will go on residing in" n public boardinghouse or hotel, or he may have to go to the expense of returning to his own district first. '

"I .put forward this only as a suggestion, but whatever policy is adopted, it would be as well to make i't a uniform one

"There will, I think, be ample accommodation at Cashmere for all classes of cases, both early and advanced. It would be very difficult to estimate the number that is likely to come in during the next year or so, but whatever it may be it will, at first, be out oi all proportion to>the number later on, as there is at present probably an accumulation of cases, more of an advanced nature. "Personally, I think it should be thf future policy of the Hospital Boards concerned to refuse anything but temporary accommodation to any case oi pulmonary tuberculosis, both in the interests of the patient himself and' the others in the ward with him. A general hospital is not the proper place for cases of this kind. If admission is necessary it should be understood that it is only pending the visit of the examining , officer, when the necessary arrangements would be made for his transfer to , The report wai adopted.