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Somerset County Herald and Taunton Courier. Saturday 18 Jul 1936
Page 3 Column 8
DEATH FROM TUBERCULOSIS
FIRST YEAR OF LESS THAN 30,000
BRITAIN'S LEAD TO THE WORLD
Deaths from tuberculosis in England and Wales last year, for the first time on record, fell below 30,000. Sir Kingsley WOOD, the Minister of Health, announced this fact when he opened the annual conference of the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis at the County Hall, Westminster, on Thursday. He added that the death rate from tuberculosis per million had fallen from 1,915 to 687 in less than 40 years, due primarily to remarkable improvements in methods of treatment. Improved standards of living and hygiene, better housing housing, better nutrition, purer milk supply and general public health measures were other favourable factors. Bovine tuberculosis was responsible in Great Britain for probably more than 2,500 deaths a year.
AN UNSURPASSED SCHEME.
In his presidential address Sir Robert PHILIP said if the 1909 death rate from tuberculosis in the United Kingdom had been operative in 1934, there would in that year have been 71,890 deaths. Actually there were 34,584. The United Kingdom tuberculosis scheme was unsurpassed by that of any other country, and had been the model for many nations.
Sir Robert characterised the present distribution of tuberculosis in cattle as thoroughly wrong and unworthy of the claims alike of health and agriculture.