[Report 1960] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City.

  • Leeds City Council
Date:
1960
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1960] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    54/308 (page 36)
    3& REPORT ON THE WORK OF THE TUBERCULOSIS DEPART¬ MENT OF THE LEEDS CHEST CLINIC BY Gordon F. Edwards, M.B.E., M.B., B.S., M.R.C.P. Senior Consultant Epidemiology.—•General.—The epidemiological features observed in Leeds bear a close resemblance to those observed nationally. The death-rate from all forms of tuberculosis continues to decline, especially in males; in females, during the year under review, there was a small increase. The mortality rate from tuberculosis is now about one-third of the average over the last ten years. Details of the Tuberculosis Register are shown in Table I, from which it will be seen that the total number of all cases of tuberculosis on the Register has been reduced by 462 during the year under review, a reduction of about 13 per cent. The reduction is due to the removal of 671 cases from the Register as recovered and is an illustration of the results of long-term anti-tuberculous drug chemotherapy which is changing very fundamentally the prognosis of tuberculous disease. The numbers of new cases added to the Register remain fairly constant, whilst the new notifications continue to fall slowly at about the same rate as during the past twenty years. There has been a reduction in notifications of respiratory tuberculosis in males, especially in the over-45 age group, while there has been a slight increase in female notifications in the 25-35 age group. Death and notification rates of i960, compared with those of 1959, are shown in Table 2. Primary Tuberculosis.—The numbers of new cases of tuberculosis show some variation year by year and there is comparable variability in the incidence of primary tuberculous lesions which continue to make up about 10 per cent, of the total of new cases of respiratory