Final report of the Departmental Committee on Tuberculosis.

  • Great Britain. Treasury. Committee on Tuberculosis.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Final report of the Departmental Committee on Tuberculosis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/226 (page 6)
    made for the treatment of a section only of the population. Recognizing that this was the case, they laid down in their Interim Report that one of the most important conditions of any scheme which might be adopted was that it should apply to the whole community. By the National Insurance Act no financial provision was made to pay for the treatment and maintenance of persons who were not in the category of insured persons or their dependants. A gap was thus left which would certainly have much increased the difficulty of conducting the campaign to a successful issue. In the then existing circumstances, and assuming the adoption of a local basis for schemes, the whole burden of providing treatment for tuberculous persons not dealt with by the National Insurance Act would have fallen upon the rates. The provision of treatment for insured persons and their dependants and the adoption of the local system recommended by the Committee will, in any case, necessitate the expenditure of considerable sums of money by local authorities, and the Committee apprehended that these authorities might be reluctant to face the further expenditure which provision of treatment for other persons would entail, and might be inclined to omit such provision from their schemes. The Committee, realising the burden which, in the past, has directly or indirectly been thrown on the rates, desire, therefore, respectfully to express their warm approval of the step which the Government contemplate taking, which will materially relieve ratepayers and greatly assist in putting the campaign against tuberculosis on a national basis while preserving the desirable feature of local administration. The Committee venture to express the hope that local authorities will now feel free to proceed with the adoption of schemes which will make provision for dealing with all the tuberculous persons resident in their areas. 9. The second of these changes relates to the finance of sanatorium benefit under the National Insurance Act. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that 6d. per insured person out of the ls. 3d. provided by Section 16 of that Act for sanatorium benefit will be applied to the remuneration of general practitioners who will be concerned with the domiciliary treatment and supervision of insured persons suffering from tuberculosis. In their Interim Report the Committee laid stress on the importance of enlisting the hearty co-operation and of stimulating the interest of the general medical practitioners of the country in the schemes for dealing with tuberculosis, and suggested that they should receive some remuneration out of the funds available for sanatorium benefit. The Committee are of opinion that they have in no way over-estimated the importance of securing the support of the general practitioner, and they welcome any financial arrangement which facilitates the attainment of that object. At the same time they regard with some anxiety the smallness of the funds available under the National Insurance Act for the maintenance of dispensaries and institutions. They hope that the funds available will prove sufficient to enable the work of the dispensaries and institutions to be carried out in a thorough and efficacious manner. PrincipaL OpsEots or THE Present Report. 10. Having regard to the nature of their Interim Report the Committee are of opinion that they cannot usefully add much to their recommendations with reference to the treatment of persons suffering from tuberculosis. In the circumstances, the Committee propose to deal in this Report mainly with the measures which should, in their opinion, be taken for the prevention of tuberculosis in general with special reference to the questions relating to bovine tuberculosis and tuberculosis in children, and to a scheme for dealing with the annual sum of mone available in the hands of the Insurance Commissioners under section 16 (2) of the National Insurance Act for the purposes of research. | At the same time the Committee do not wish to be understood to mean that the question of treatment can be wholly divorced from that of prevention. It is desirable to state at once that, in their opinion, the two questions are very closely interrelated. Effective treatment leads to prevention and effective prevention leads to diminished need for treatment.