The value of fresh air was also widely held by the medical profession and by society in general. Around the 1940's, an effective drug treatment was discovered, and was well established by 1950. Due to the new drug therapy, death from tuberculosis no longer seemed inevitable. By the 1970's, surgery was no longer necessary as drugs were successfully used as treatment in over 95 per cent of cases, and the sanatoria began to close. However, the numbers of new Canadian cases did not decline until the 1990's, says Dr. Jeanes.
Tuberculosis is no longer a public hazard in Canada, or a problem for the individual patient.
Almost 100 per cent of new cases can expect to be cured with little disruption of their lives. Today the morbidity rate remains steady with about seven infections for every 100,000 Canadians. Although tuberculosis was a major lung disease over the early part of the decade, the flu also claimed many lives. In 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic, which killed 20 to 40 million people worldwide, took an estimated 23,000 lives in Quebec and Ontario. Other flu outbreaks were also deaths were from pneumonia, which developed as a result of the flu.