FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 26 April 1918, Page 3

FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS.

SCHEME FOR INCURABLES

Th© work of the Public Health Department in combating the spread Of tuberculosis among the civil population has been to some extent interrupted by the demands made on the resources of the Department by returning soldiers suffering from consumption (says the Dominion). The biggest of all the consumptive sanatoria in the Dominion, Te Waikato, near Cambridge, has for some time been occupied solely by soldiers and discharged men returned from active service. The Defence Department has again taken charge of the «ick and wounded soldiers, and will provide other places in. which to treat those of the returned men who come back suffering with this disease.

The Minister of Public Health stated yesterday that he hoped soon to have the Cambridge institution available again for the reception df civilian, patients. He undersDood that the Defence Department intended to erect a new institution in the Hawke'e Bay district, and he hoped that when this institution should be no longer required by the military it would be useful as a valuable addition to the civilian institutions of the Dominion. Another institution was to be erected in the South Canterbury district. "At present," said the Minister, "our effort is to get control of cases in the early stages, when the disease is curable. The importance of early treatment is being now fully recognised, and I believe that this will have the. effect of steadily reducing the spread of the disease. It is, however, absolutely necessary that provision should be made for those unfortunate people who are suffering from the disease in advanced stages, and who are incurable. Medical superintendents express the opinion that the housing of these cases in the institutions is most undesirable, and, in fact, it is their custom to discharge such cases when they prove to be incurable. The result is that these unfortunates have a painful period before them, during which they are a grave source of danger to their families among whom they have to live. Up till the present no provision has been njade for this class of cases, but I have instructed the Acting-Chief Health Officer, Dr. Frengley, to formulate a scheme for the establishment pf one institution in each island, where chronic and incur- | able cases may be held and treated."