View report page

75
Section 172 of the Public Health Act, 1936, repeats the powers
previously granted under the 1925 Public Health Act, for the compulsory
removal to hospital on a Court Order of infectious persons suffering
from pulmonary tuberculosis where precautions to prevent the spread
of infection cannot be or are not taken, and when serious risk of infection
is thereby caused to other persons. No application for such an Order
has as yet been made. The very existence of such powers, though, is
helpful in difficult cases.
The insidiousness of the onset of tuberculosis, and the indefiniteness
or even complete absence of symptoms add to the difficulties in the
control and eradication of this disease. While the disease is unrecognised,
not only are the sufferers possibly communicating the infection to others,
but in themselves the disease is progressing so that at best when recognised
the lesions are so advanced that long-term treatment is necessary, while
in many even that state has been passed. Although not invariably so,
diagnosis can usually be made earlier by X-ray than by physical examination.
To result in detection in the earliest stages, though, examination
must precede even the onset of symptoms. To be successful, then,
facilities must be available for the examination of normal healthy individuals.
While this cannot as yet be arranged for the general population,
something is being done by the examination of specially selected groups.