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20
effect on the incidence of the disease, it seems probable that, without
these measures, there would be a still higher incidence with more
notifications and that the steady number of notifications observed
each year is maintained by some undiagnosed reservoir of infection.
It is believed that this reservoir of infection is located in a hard
core of the population which does not at any time avail itself of
the opportunity of having Chest X-rays at the Mass Radiography
Unit. As a result a number of people who have tuberculosis are
undiagnosed and remain in the population as a source of infection
to others.
It would appear therefore that a plan to reduce the notification
rate below its present almost stationary level must aim at the early
diagnosis of these sources of infection. In order to bring this
'hard core' to the Mass Radiography Unit an intensive and ceaseless
propaganda campaign is necessary and we hope that the campaign
planned for 1954 will show good results when the Unit visits the
Borough in November of next year.
Two graphs and a second table show the trends of notifications
of tuberculosis in the last ten years, and of deaths from tuberculosis
and the percentage decrease in the number of deaths over the same
period.