Abstract
SIR KINGSLEY WOOD, the Minister of Health, inaugurated the twenty-second annual conference of the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis at the County Hall, London, on July 16. He stated that great progress has been made in the fight against tuberculosis. For the first time on record, the total number of deaths in England and Wales from all forms of tuberculosis fell in 1935 below 30,000. The standardized death-rate from tuberculosis has fallen from 1,915 to 687 per million in less than forty years. This striking record of progress is due in the first place to remarkable improvements in methods of treatment. Much also is due to the example given by the establishment, as a result of greater knowledge and active propaganda, of voluntary sanatoria and dispensaries. It is significant that no sanatorium in the modern sense existed in Great Britain before 1898. Improved standards of living and hygiene, better housing, better nutrition, purer rnilk supply and general public health measures have played and will continue to play a considerable part in the attack upon this disease. But there are many opportunities for further advance. There is a great need for encouraging those who were suffering or suspected to be suffering from tuberculosis to take advantage at the earliest possible stage of the facilities provided for diagnosis and treatment. The importance also of eliminating tuberculous cattle from the herds of Great Britain is obviously very great. Bovine tuberculosis is responsible in Great Britain for a large number of deaths, probably more than 2,500 per annum, and for a still larger amount of serious illness. Much remains to be done before we can be satisfied that the whole of our milk supply is safe.
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Prevention of Tuberculosis. Nature 138, 158–159 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138158c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138158c0