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TUBERCULOSIS
The notification rates of tuberculosis were slightly lower than in 1956, with the Introduction
exception of pulmonary notifications at 0-4 years for both boys and girls and nonpulmonary
notifications for girls aged 5-14 years, but the latter is based on such small
numbers as to have no statistical significance. Death rates also showed the same general
trend ; deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis under 25 years of age and all deaths from
non-pulmonary tuberculosis are now so few that considerable random fluctuations
occur in the rates from year to year. The number of cases on the registers remains
practically unchanged, the figure has been 38,000 odd for the past three years. The
diagram on page 26 shows the trend of notifications, deaths and numbers on the registers
of chest clinics over the last decade.
The services provided by the Council as local health authority and described in Services
detail in my report for 1955 for the care and after-care of tuberculous patients and the provlded
prevention of tuberculosis continued to be available during the year. They are summarised
for the years 1952-57 in Table T9 (page 31).
The voluntary tuberculosis care committees associated with most of the 29 chest Care
clinics in London continued their valuable work of assisting patients and their families Commlttees
financially or in other ways where help was not available from official sources. The
Council's local tuberculosis care organisers act as secretaries to these committees.
The numbers of children vaccinated during the year under the Council's schemes b.C.G.
for the B.C.G. vaccination of susceptible (tuberculin negative) child contacts of known vaccination
tuberculous patients, diabetic children and thirteen-year-old school children are shown
in Table T13 (page 33).
In addition to the B.C.G. vaccination schemes other preventive measures arranged Preventive
by the Council include the chest X-ray of all newly appointed staff who are likely to mcasures
work in close and frequent contact with children, staff and senior pupils at the Council's
occupation centres for mentally deficient persons (Table T12, page 33) and of positive
reactors among thirteen-year-old school children tested with a view to B.C.G. vaccination.
Epidemiological investigations are made of the contacts of cases of tuberculosis
notified among the children, staff or residents in the Council's establishments. Similar
investigations are carried out at secondary schools where the tuberculin positivity rate
disclosed at the prc-B.C.G. vaccination tests is significantly higher than the average for
secondary schools in the area. (See Table T8, page 30).
Table T1—Tuberculosis—Statutory notifications and deaths—Administrative County oj
London, 1948-57 (a)
Year
Pulmonary tuberculosis
Non-pulmonary tuberculosis
Statutory
notifications
Deaths
Statutory
notifications
Deaths
No.
Annual
rate per
1,000
living
No.
Annual
rate per
1,000
living
No.
Annual
rate per
1,000
living
No.
Annual
rate per
1,000
living
1948
5,473
1.61
1,900
0.56
600
0.18
202
0.06
1949
5,699
1.68
1,585
0.47
553
0.16
156
0.05
1950
5,189
1.53
1,225
0.36
529
0.16
122
0.04
1951
4,897
1.46
1,154
0.34
507
0.15
125
0.04
1952
4,713
1.40
933
0.28
518
0.15
86
0.03
1953
4,668
1.40
690
0.21
410
0.12
73
0.02
1954
4,231
1.27
596
0.18
410
0.12
62
0.02
1955
3,757
1.14
517
0.16
365
0.11
44
0.01
1956
3,602
1.10
423
0.3
327
0.10
32
0.01
1957
3,460
1.06
378
0.12
294
0.09
50
0.02
(i) Excluding posthumous notifications
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