20.04.1995

TB hits low paid

THERE HAS been a 12% rise in the incidence of tuberculosis in the UK over the last decade. The figures are still low by comparison to other areas of the world. Cases per 10,000 are: in Britain 1, in the US 10 and in Bangladesh 90 per year. Three million die every year from TB and the figures are rising.

More damning is that the increase in the UK is accounted for by a 35% rise among the lowest paid in Britain. Hackney was pinpointed by the press last week as an area where the rise is very dramatic.

The homeless charity, Crisis, reports that rates of TB among homeless people in England and Wales are 200 times the level in the general population.

It is a disease closely associated with leprosy and Aids, helping them to spread. It can be prevented by good housing and adequate diet.

Air travel has been indicated as one area where the disease is passed on, travelling in a confined space from areas where there is a high incidence to low incidence areas. But it is spreading most among people who rarely, if ever, use air travel.

It can only be stopped by a world health programme that requires not so much increased medical support, important though that is, as a rise in living standards, decent housing and diet. The rise in TB is a particularly alarming example of capitalism in its more decadent and barbaric phase.

John Bayliss