CURE FOR CONSUMPTION

Grey River Argus, 26 April 1929, Page 2

CURE FOR CONSUMPTION

DEATH RATE DOWN BY HALF IN FORTY YEARS.

Conquest and cure of tuberculosis in its early stages is an accomplished fact, according to Dr. F. Leonard Keith, medical officer at Bethnal Green. Lecturing at the Winter School for Health Visitors and School Nurses, at Bedford College for Women, London, Dr. Keith stated that the dearh rate from tuberculosis had dropped 40 or 50 per cent in the last 40 years. “If” h e continued, “we find a case in an early stage—and by modern diagnostic methods this can easily be detected, provided people will come to us—the disease is qui e curable.” The death rate in women had improved more than in men. “But this death rate lias changed not only in sex, but in age, and death nnw tend-* to be in the younger periods of lise rather than the middle-aged.” he added. He attributed the decline in mortality very largely to the improved standard* of modern living. Where wages were lowest the death rate was highest. Dr. Keith defined the five g-eat barriers which are still io be broken down as:— Defective notification since the

ascertaining of cases is both incoik plete and in many instances too late. Poverty. Bad housing conditions, which reduce the convalescent’s chance of recovery and facilitate the spread of the disease among the family, f Milk, the staple food of chflj hood, may contain living tii£irculosis bacilli, for which pastuerisation would be an effective safeguard, and the industrial barrier, creating the difficulty of reabsorbing into industry persons capable of vnlj part time employmen*, and then but intermittently. There was a good deal of sary nervousness on the part of many people over tuberculosis, remarked Dr. Keith. The majority of people who had the disease were not infectious; the publicity about it should dweP not so much on its risks, as its cur* bility if taken in time. Baty Bros, are rhe only manufacturers of Pasteurised Milk on the West Coast. Ring Phone 411 and they will call.