NEED TO ARREST TB AT AN EARLY STAGE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29610, 5 September 1961, Page 15

NEED TO ARREST TB AT AN EARLY STAGE

"Tne cress" special service

WELLINGTON, Sept. 4. Tuberculosis is a gravely serious disease, which if not arrested brings disastrous results to the patient, together with the added danger that it may be transmitted to others, says the annual report of the executive council of the New Zealand Federation of Tuberculosis Associations which will be presented at the association’s annual meeting in Wellington on September 13. “In the past the patient's recovery depended on bed rest, which was necessarily a very prolonged process,” says the report. “Even in its minimal stages the disease required bed rest of at least a year or longer, and in more advanced stages bed rest was frequently extended over two or three years—sometimes indefinitely. “With the introduction of chemotherapy, the duration of bed rest has now been greatly reduced, which means a corresponding decrease in the time the patient is unable to resume employment. “Early detection is of vital importance, not only to the individual but also the public;' for it is not the known cases of tuberculosis which are the real danger to the community, but the unknown ones from whom infection spreads unchecked.” The report said that a most

important fact must be stressed, namely, “that a considerable number of people who have had a chest X-ray which showed them free of tuberculosis are under the impression that they are immune for life; this is most definitely not the case —they are still liable to infection at any time should they come into contact with a person suffering from active tuberculosis. It is therefore essential that they should, after a suitable period, again submit to examination in order to be assured of immunity. “Despite appeals by health authorities generally, there remains a hard core of citizens who persistently fail to attend for X-ray. “It may be well to remember that in these days people rarely die of tuberculosis and that the disease seldom results in permanent incapacity. When the disease is discovered in its early stages and is followed by early treatment it frequently happens that temporary invalidity is of short duration; very often there is no period of invalidity and the patient may reach the end of treatment with little loss of employment,” says the report. “The importance of case finding is emphatically stressed for the reason that it still remains the great challenge to complete eradication of tuberculosis.”