Background
Tuberculosis
(TB) is a poverty-related disease that is associated with poor living
conditions. We studied TB mortality and living conditions in Bern between 1856
and 1950.
Methods
We
analysed cause-specific mortality based on mortality registers certified by
autopsies, and public health reports 1856 to 1950 from the city council of
Bern.
Results
TB
mortality was higher in the Black Quarter (550 per 100,000) and in the city
centre (327 per 100,000), compared to the outskirts (209 per 100,000 in
1911–1915). TB mortality correlated positively with the number of persons per
room (r = 0.69, p = 0.026), the percentage of rooms without sunlight (r = 0.72,
p = 0.020), and negatively with the number of windows per apartment (r = -0.79,
p = 0.007). TB mortality decreased 10-fold from 330 per 100,000 in 1856 to 33
per 100,000 in 1950, as housing conditions improved, indoor crowding decreased,
and open-air schools, sanatoria, systematic tuberculin skin testing of school
children and chest radiography screening were introduced.
Conclusions
Improved living conditions and public health measures may
have contributed to the massive decline of the TB epidemic in the city of Bern
even before effective antibiotic treatment became finally available in the
1950s.
Below: Changes in the mortality due to injuries (including homicide), communicable (infectious diseases and infant death) and non-communicable diseases (including cancer) in the capital city of Bern, Switzerland, between 1856 and 1950
Below: Trends in TB mortality in the city of Bern, Switzerland, between1856 to 1950, in relation to important events for TB control
Full article at: http://goo.gl/DXtulU
By:
Kathrin Zürcher, Marie Ballif, Marcel Zwahlen, Matthias
Egger, Lukas Fenner
Institute of Social and
Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Marie Ballif, Lukas Fenner
Swiss Tropical and Public Health
Institute, Basel, Switzerland
Marie Ballif, Lukas Fenner
University of Basel, Basel,
Switzerland
Hans L. Rieder
Epidemiology, Biostatistics and
Prevention Institute, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
More at: https://twitter.com/hiv insight
No comments:
Post a Comment