TB or not TB! BY LLOYD GORMAN Every day more than 30,000 people catch it and 4,000 die from it, but this disease rarely - if ever - hits the headlines, possibly because most of its victims are in developing and poorer nations. But there was a time, within living memory, when Tuberculosis (TB) - one of the deadliest killers the world has ever known caused havoc, dread and death across Ireland.
Some 7,000 people a year became infected and until specific drugs were developed in the early 1950’s to fight it, with infection seen as a death sentence. The death rate was appalling. Between 1950 and 1960 about 10,000 people - men, women and children - a year lost their lives to TB. TB is now a preventable and largely curable disease, caused by a bacterium (germ) called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It usually affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body, including the glands, the bones and rarely the brain. It spreads by an infected person coughing, sneezing or spitting. Children, people with poor health, weak immune systems or already suffering from another disease are at greater risk of becoming ill from TB (not everyone who becomes infected develops TB). Poor housing and overcrowded conditions also put people at risk. Another type of TB that may have been a factor at play in 1950’s rural Ireland was called Mycobacterium bovis, which can arise from drinking contaminated milk, but this form of TB is now rare as pasteurisation of milk removes the risk.
The scourge of Tuberculosis The fight against TB was led by Dr Noël Browne. Browne worked in various ‘sanatoriums’ as a young doctor and saw its withering effects. He also saw hospital buildings in terrible condition and an antiquated and inflexible system that was not centred on the patients needs. On a personal level, a nine year old Noël lost both his parents to TB within a short period of time, and he himself suffered from it.
Top: Dr Browne’s book, Against The Tide. Above: A 1948 Cabinet meeting, Dr Browne is sitting far left
In order to achieve social and medical change, Browne went into politics and would have one of the most incredible political careers of any modern day parliamentarian. His Mother and Child Scheme for example, collapsed the first inter party government in 1951*. As minister for health, he spared no time or effort in confronting the TB problem. Amongst other things he introduced a mass radiography scheme which allowed many more patients to have their chest and lungs x-rayed, and created more than 5,000 extra hospital beds. The measures and improvements slashed the death rate, sparked a decline in the number of cases and increased the recovery rate of patients. THE IRISH SCENE | 22
