Until recently, I thought TB had been conquered. That it was an old disease we had under control and that its history had faded into the medical journals, but last Saturday was World TB Day 2001. TB has far from faded. The TB death rate in the black community in 1910 was 445.5 per 100,000, according to David McBride's book, from TB to AIDS, Epidemics among urban blacks since 1900. The death rate was four to five times higher than the white community.
Many families here have awful memories of the disease.
My mother still talks about how TB spread through the little community of Kibler, Ark., and how she was lucky to escape to a sanitarium as a teen-ager. Their brothers were not so lucky. All were dead before they turned 50. My mother is still here after a second trip to a sanitarium in 1959. The death toll that year from TB was 11,474, according to the Centers for Disease Control.