Tuberculosis Mortality in the United States

Abstract

ACCORDING to J. Yerushalmy, principal statistician, H. E. Hilleboe, senior surgeon, and C. E. Palmer, surgeon, United States Public Health Service (Public Health Rep., 58, 1457; 1943), the average annual number of deaths from all forms of tuberculosis in the United States in the period 1939–41 was 10,429 (45·9 per 100,000 of the population). Mortality from tuberculosis was 41 per cent higher among males than among females, and three and a half times as high among non-whites as among whites. Death-rates for all forms of tuberculosis were higher in the older age-groups than in the younger. Among children and young adults the rates were higher for females than for males; but in the older groups the rates were much higher for males. Nearly one half of all tuberculosis deaths occurred at the ages 20–44. The death-rate from tuberculosis for males was higher among residents of large cities than among residents in intermediate sized cities, and that of the latter was much higher than the rate for residents in rural areas. Tuberculosis mortality has decreased continuously since the beginning of the century, the rate in 1941 being less than one fourth that in 1900, and has fallen at a greater rate than mortality from all causes.