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Show State Premises Gmni County Involvement In Test Program Parictipation in last year's school tuberculin testing program pro-gram in Grand County drew the praise of the Utah Tuberculosis Tu-berculosis and Health Association. As-sociation. In a statement issued is-sued Monday, Mason W. Smith, Salt Lake City, president, presi-dent, expressed commendation commenda-tion to health department, school district and community commun-ity volunteer workers for achieving 96 per cent participation. par-ticipation. The average participation for the entire state was 89 per cent. Participation in Grand County for entering students was 69.5 per cent; for eighth graders 81.4 per cent, and for school personnel, person-nel, 100 per cent. "Tuberculin testing in Utah is conducted among kindergarten kinder-garten or first grade students, stud-ents, eighth graders and schopl personnel," Mr. Smith explained. "The national average av-erage participation of these groups is 78 per cent. The Christmas Seal Association Asso-ciation gave certificates of commendation to schools and health departments where there was 95 per cent or more participation. "There were 376 such schools in Utah this past year," Mr. Smith said, "as compared with only 186 the previous year." Slate Division of Health figures show that there w;ere 15 entering students who had a positive tuberculin test among am-ong five or six year olds, 53 among eighth graders and 1,408 among the school personnel per-sonnel last year. One of the school beginners was found to have active tuberculosis. There are no symptoms in the early stages of this communicable com-municable disease. A positive tuberculin test indicates that the individual has tuberculosis germs in his body. These people are at special risk to break down with active tuberculosis at some time in the future. Current Cur-rent research shows that 30 per cent of Utah's future TB cases will come from these people who now carry a tuberculosis tu-berculosis infection.- More than 10 per cent of school personnel in Utah are tuberculin tuber-culin reactors. 1 Tuberculin testing is employed em-ployed in modern TB preventive pre-ventive programs to find these people who are infected infect-ed with TB germs. Rather than wait for these people to develop active disease, as we used to do, today we give an effective, economical preventive pre-ventive treatment. Not only is the risk of active tuberculosis tuber-culosis reduced for the individual, in-dividual, but its spread to others is prevented as well. The Christmas Seal organization organ-ization urges all Utahns not served in the school tuberculin tubercu-lin testing program to seek an annual tuberculin test as a precaution against tuberculosis, tuber-culosis, Mr. Smith said. |