What Price Apathy—A School Epidemic of Tuberculosis

¹ Superintendent and Medical Director, Lake County Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Associate in Medicine, Stritch School of Medicine

In Lake County, Illinois, a wealthy community where tuberculosis deaths had been reduced from 40 to 2.6 per 100,000 in a period of 23 years, a feeling of complacency developed.

In the past year, a far-advanced case of tuberculosis was found in a grade school and this resulted in an intensive community tuberculin testing project involving some 11,000 persons.

Careful analysis revealed 20 per cent of school children tuberculin positive where we had been finding 3.5 to 5 per cent on testing small groups. Twenty persons with pulmonary tuberculosis have been hospitalized from this area where before on "casual survey" we found only an occasional case.

This study emphasizes the fallacy of letting up on control efforts and becoming apathetic about tuberculosis even in economically well-to-do and enlightened communities.

Tuberculosis is not only the physician's problem, it is everyone's problem and this disease is the firstborn of the Mother of Pestilence.