HC Deb 13 November 1956 vol 560 cc732-3
20. Dr. Dickson Mabon

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a full statement on the Department of Health anti-tuberculosis campaign for 1957.

Mr. J. Stuart

Plans are now being completed for a new series of community surveys by mass radiography, more intensive and on a much larger scale than hitherto, as part of a two-year campaign to combat respiratory tuberculosis in Scotland. I am not yet able to make a full statement, but in the meantime the House will be glad to know that the Corporation of Glasgow has accepted my invitation to conduct a city-wide survey as the opening stage of this campaign in March and April, 1957. With the assistance of my right hon. Friends, the Minister of Health, the Secretary of State for War and the Secretary of State for Air, about twenty-five mass radiography units and, it is hoped, staff on loan from England and Wales and from the Services, in addition to the ten normally at our disposal, are being made available for a period of five weeks.

The local authorities of the other three cities and of many areas in the industrial belt are being offered facilities to arrange similar surveys at later stages of the campaign, and I hope that well over one million examinations by mass radiography will be carried out during the two-year period.

Dr. Mabon

I am obliged.