View report page

104
B.C.G. They were two boys of fifteen and twenty-one and two girls of
fourteen and twenty-two. The corresponding figure in the previous year
was eleven.
The Council has always been generous in the allocation of Council
houses to families in which there is a member suffering from pulmonary
tuberculosis. The object, of course, is to do what is possible to prevent the
spread of infection. The factors taken into account in selecting families
for such favourable treatment are those which favour the spread of
infection, these are the infectiousness of the patients and the degree of
overcrowding. Over the years large numbers of families have been rehoused
for this reason and the Council at one time were allocating as
much as one-tenth of its new houses for this purpose. In the earlier days
it was difficult to select from the many being considered, the families whose
needs were greatest because the circumstances in which so many were
living were so very bad. Gradually most of the cases were housed and the
time came when there was only a small list of such families and in their
cases, the needs were nothing like as urgent as those of the families in the
earlier days. Conditions have improved still further and at the end of the
year there was no family on the list of those being recommended for
re-housing on the grounds that a member of the family was suffering from
tuberculosis. This, of course, does not mean that there are no families
with a member suffering from tuberculosis who would not be helped by
being given better housing, but in the case of these families, the advantage
of their being re-housed would not be to reduce the risk of spreading the
infection but to improve the surroundings of the sufferer. In that re-housing
such families would do nothing to prevent spreading the infection, the
patient would be in the same situation as those people suffering from one
of a number of non-communicable diseases who would benefit by better
housing. The circumstances of these families are considered by the
Special Housing Sub-Committee.