I Chest X-Rays Help In Fight Against Tb.

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28888, 7 May 1959, Page 23

I Chest X-Rays Help In Fight Against Tb.

Prevention is better than cure, and that is the lesson the Department of Health advances at the New Zealand Industries Fair, where once again it has set up the mass X-ray plant and invites people to have a chest X-ray as a I check on their health. The unit has been moved from e the X-ray clinic in Manchester s street, and the department finds ir that the Industries Fair presents e a good opportunity of getting in it touch with persons who have not Jr had X-ray check-ups as members | of an industrial or business group n or who come from districts whieh

have not been visited by the mobile radiography unit. Of the 2802 persons X-rayed at the fair last year, 1464 had not had a chest X-ray before or had not had one for several years. At the 1957 fair, the unit put through 3200 persons. With the advance made with the new drugs, New Zealand has drastically curtailed the fatal cases of tuberculosis, once re-

garded as a killing disease, but vigilance is still needed to detect tuberculosis, and wher it is caught in its early non-infective stages the treatment was easier and it cannot be spread. That is where mass X-ray units step in, and the aim of the department is that everyone should have a chest X-ray once a year. The unit has a close liaison with manufacturing industries, and groups of workers are taken from factories to the clinic for X-rays, and in the case of big industries the X-ray plant moves to them. Anyone is welcome to walk in off the street to the clinic for an X-ray—except during the next fortnight, of course, when the plant is at the fair—the unit has been taken round the suburbs, and to the country, and special womens weeks are held each year. But the fair can cater for those who missed, and the department’s staff at the fair does not mind how hard it has to work as long as it is reaching the people. This simple form of health assurance requires no appointments and no undressing. It is all over in a minute or two.