Breaking the Tuberculosis Cycle: Another Look at the Impact of Chemotherapy

Writers in the history of medicine have become increasingly skeptical of the contribution medicine may have made to the improvement of health in industrial countries (Illich, 1975). Chemotherapy of tuberculosis of the lung (TB), however, is tentatively accepted as an exception of the rule by some, e.g. Fuchs (1975). This paper is an attempt at estimating the impact of TB chemotherapy jointly with the influences of other factors, such as living conditions, income, and public outlays on health care. Its novel feature lies in a systems approach: For example, feedbacks from quicker recovery from TB to reduced risk of infection are allowed for. After some historical notes on the social and medical aspects of TB, a model of the full TB cycle is sketched. The subsequent section deals with the data and presents some estimation results. These results are discussed and evaluated in the final section.