T.B. Risk In Milk: Health Dept. Report

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29878, 19 July 1962, Page 15

T.B. Risk In Milk: Health Dept. Report

The risk of developing non-respiratory tuberculosis from drinking milk infected with tubercle bacilli may have been somewhat exaggerated, says Dr. F. A. de Hamel, of the Health Department, in a special report on tuberculosis in Canterbury, issued by the department’s medical statistics branch.

“However, tubercle bacilli should not be present in milk for human consumption,” he adds. “On the broadest and best public-health principles it is obviously wrong that humans should drink milk which is infected by any organisjn which is preventable by the available measures.”

Dr de Hamel also says that infected milk can play litUe or no part in the incidence of respiratory disease. In spite of remarkable progress in tuberculosis treatment. he says, it would be foolish not to take seriously a disease which kills 4 per cent, of those who contract it over the age of 45. and more than 1 per cent, of those who contract it at any age A falling death-rate is applicable to Canterbury as it is elsewhere, but the death-rate is still too high in those over 65 and still far too high in men of 55 to 64 years. "Tuberculosis is still a killing disease in old men," he says. “As a cause of death in women, it is falling away fast"

Dr de Hamel says it is an indication of the failure of present control of tuberculosis that there has been practically no change in the rates of new disease in men over 35 in the last 15 years "All efforts have been concentrated on those from five to 34 years with great effect." he says, “but the other groups have failed to receive similar benefit.”

Writing of the Christchurch urban area, he says the evidence suggests that it is home contact rather than outside infection which causes most tuberculin positivity In both children ana adults. Residential factors appear more significant than employment or shopping. “Cinemas and public bars may be a fruitful source of disease spread.” he says, “but no -means were found of relating these places or their habitues to sector residence ’’

Dr. de Hamel says it is probably unusual for children with tuberculosis to infect others. Adult cross-infection is the common means of community spread. He says th< re is also clear evidence that, in Christchurch, dwellers in boarding-houses and hotels have a greater tuberculosis rate than those in domes'.jc households.