[Report 1950] / Medical Officer of Health, County of Zetland (Shetland Islands).

  • Shetland (Scotland). County Council.
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1950] / Medical Officer of Health, County of Zetland (Shetland Islands). Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/36 (page 8)
    TUBERCULOSIS There were nine deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis during the year. This is three less than the numbers recorded for 1948 and 1949 . There were six fewer notifications than in the previous year. It is difficult to study what is happening when dealing with such a sma.ll number of cases, but there is reason to think that the tuberculosis position is improving. Throughout 1950 there was never at any^time a waiting list for^the Sanatorium, and cases requiring hospital treatment were admitted as soon as they were found. In Scotland in 1950 there was recorded a record low mortality rate for pulmonary tuberculosis - 0.47 per 1,000. Our figures for the past three years have been: 1948 - 0.79 1949 -“0.89, end 1950 - 0.50. It might be that we are now joining in the general improvement that has been noticeable in Scotland during the past two years. ) One still hears expressed the belief that this area is a particularly unfortunate one for tuberculosis. There is. nothing in the statistics for the past twenty years to justify this belief. The quinquennial average mortality rate for pulmonary tuberculosis for the yeai 1946-50 for Shetland was 0.59 per 1,000. The quinquennial average rate for Scotland for the years 1946-50 was 0.61. It is difficult to compare figures for an area with only a few deaths each year with the national figures, and our statistics are at present being examined in the Department of Health to see whether we have followed the same post-war trend in this disease as the rest of the country. Throughout the year a consultant chest physician from Aberdeen has mode visits to Shetland once a quarter. . He has directed treatment of in-patients and selected suitable cases for transfer to hospitals in the south for more complicated forms of treatment. The X-ray set at the Sanatorium has been used on the weekly out-patient day to make chest plates of 274 different out-patients. Contacts of known cases have submitted willingly to examination. District nurses have made 990 visits to 142 different patients on the tuberculosis register. Child contacts have been examined in the hope of find- ing suitable cases for B.C.G. inoculation, but so far the few child contacts of all our new cases have proved after skin testing to’ be unsuitable for this form of protection. The possibility of using B.C.G. on suitable cases is being borne in mind. VACCINATION iJSID IMMUNISATION/