The Tuberculosis Problem of the Union of South Africa

The pattern of tuberculosis in the Union of South Africa is modified by a number of factors: ethnologic, climatic, industrial, and, to a lesser extent, geographic.

The control of tuberculosis is in large part related to the control of the non-European (coloured, Bantu and Asiatic) tuberculotic. Measures in operation at present are sporadic and far from a properly organized campaign.

The objectives to be achieved can be summarized as follows:

1. Eliminate the infecting case—find, isolate, treat.

2. (a) Feed an adequate diet to all sections of the community.

(b) Do not allow sustained physical effort without adequate diet.

Case finding would depend on mass radiography operating in clinics established as well as mobile. Isolation and treatment would occur on well-known and accepted lines. The pasteurizing of urban milk supplies would be compulsory in order to eliminate an existing heavy bovine infection. Emphasis is finally laid on the education of the whole people, especially in diet selection with regard to protective foods, and also on the importance of conditioning the potential labourer by good feeding and physical training before submitting him to the severe tax which modern labour places on his strength and resistance.

The problem at present hinges largely on finance, that is, on how much the small body of taxpayers amongst two and a quarter million white people can bring themselves to afford. One feels that a really big effort now may achieve remarkable results. Let us pray that the "powers that be" may be stirred to action in time.