THE SWEDISH BCG EXPEDITION IN GERMANY

[摘要] IN SIMILARITY with conditions in other war-harassed countries, there was a great increase of tuberculosis in Germany during and immediately after World War II. Lydtin reports that the mortality in 1946 showed an increase of between 50 and 100% as compared with the prewar mortality rates. Children in the first three years of life and young people in ages ranging from 15 to 25 years especially fell victim to the disease. Owing to the lack of hospital accommodations and material for roentgenographic examinations, the Germans after the war had no possibility of treating or of isolating and supervising all these tuberculous cases. If to this there is added the appallingly overcrowded living-quarters of the bomb-damaged German towns and the inherent risk of contagion, one understands the apprehension of the German medical profession that the tuberculosis mortality rate, which since 1946 had seemed to be on the decrease, would again rise. It was therefore with deep appreciation that the Occupation Forces and the German authorities received an offer of assistance for BCG vaccination from the Danish and the Swedish Red Cross. After the war, there had been organized on the initiative of the Danish Red Cross and UNICEF a cooperation, for the purpose of fighting tuberculosis, between the Red Cross Associations of the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the only countries in which there is a long-standing and extensive experience with BCG vaccination. Physicians, nurses, vaccine and other materials for vaccination were accordingly sent to Germany. In 1947 the Danish Red Cross commenced BCG vaccinations in the American zone and in Schleswig-Holstein and in June 1948 the Swedish Red Cross commenced its task in the British zone.

[学科分类] 儿科学