La educación higiénica y el trabajo social en la campaña contra la tuberculosis

Abstract

As it is materially impossible for all tubercular patients to remain in hospitals until complete recovery, they have to be treated after leaving the hospital in dispensaries or as outside patients. It is obvious, therefore, that discharge from the hospital does not mean that the patient is definitely cured. Even when presumably clinically cured, he still needs to have periodical examinations in the clinic for several months or even years. It has been said that 50 per cent of previously hospitalized tuberculosis patients die within five years after leaving the sanatorium

For all these reasons, tuberculosis control organizations cannot limit themselves in their relations with the patient to treatment in clinics or hospitals. They must have a follow up system with visiting nurses and social workers in order to insure that the patient will not neglect the ambulatory care prescribed by the physician, and that he does not return to an environment, either at home or at work, where insanitary conditions might promote reinfection

On the return home of the patient the social worker is faced with one of the most difficult problems and at the same time one of the most important in her task, namely, the re-education of the patient, his re-integration into social life and adjustment to a new job in case he contracted tuberculosis while carrying out his old job. This task of readaptation becomes ... (AU)