March 28 in Blackpool
… that there has been a 27% increase in tuberculosis in the North West between 2003 and 2005?
I was at an exhibition earlier this week at the Barbican on the work of the Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto, one of my all-time heroes. One of his greatest works is the tuberculosis sanatorium he built at Paimio in Finland (see photo). With its clean lines and fluid symmetry, it is a beautiful structure, especially its projecting sun terrace and balconies – lying in the sun was part of the treatment for tuberculosis, summer and winter, so they were an essential part of sanatorium architecture.
Reacquainting myself with Paimio reminded me how, even as late as the 1930s, the scourge of tuberculosis affected most of the western world. Sufferers were ‘exiled’, essentially, to healthier climes in order to slowly subside to the disease’s slow but determined creep. Even those patients who survived would have to spend months, if not years, in these places. Antibiotics have progressed sufficiently these days that it is no longer a death sentence, but it still remains a nasty business.
It is easy to think that TB is no longer something we have to worry about – a disease of the past like cholera, typhoid or the plague. But since 1993, the incidence of TB has risen from 5,104 to 8,037 (2005). The incidence continues to increase. In some London boroughs, the rate per 100,000 people is above that of the likes of Uzbekistan.
Before the last war, public health was regarded as one of the most important functions of government – Labour and Conservative. The protection of the public from disease was where state provision of healthcare in the 19th century actually began. How appalling, then, that the current Labour government seems to regard public health with such disdain, and is so unconcerned that it spent only £10,000 on TB awareness in 2004-05 – only a little more than £1 per diagnosed case. TB is an infectious disease, and we need to get a grip on it before it’s too late, and before we have to start reopening the sanatoria closed in the 1950s.
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