The White Death

Europe's most prevalent symptom is a racking cough. Its undernourished people, though spared (thanks to UNRRA and private relief) from the dramatic pestilences that usually follow war, are succumbing by thousands to the insidious white plague of tuberculosis. Last week an Associated Press survey in Europe confirmed what many doctors have feared: T.B., on the rise for the first time in a century, is now Europe's No. 1 killer.*

Worst plague spots:

P: Germany, which before Hitler had one of the world's lowest T.B. rates and now has one of the highest. Each week there are 400 new T.B. cases and 150 deaths in Berlin alone. The U.S. occupation zone has 117,983 T.B. patients.

P: Poland, where an estimated 18,000 people, mostly youngsters, die of T.B. each month.

P: Greece, where 150,000 seriously ill patients are in need of a rest cure--but there are only 5,000 T.B. hospital beds.

P: Rumania, of whose 16,500,000 people, 600,000 have T.B.

P: Yugoslavia, which at last reports had 157,000 cases. Even in comparatively well-fed Zagreb, T.B. had risen 58%.

What can be done? UNRRA, the American Red Cross, Europe's handful of doctors have failed to stop the white plague's spread. This month one of Europe's smallest countries, Denmark, will launch a brave try. Its weapon: BCG vaccine (TIME, Nov. 11), which in Danish tests has reduced the T.B. rate to one-seventh that among the unvaccinated. In the next few weeks Danish Red Cross teams, each consisting of a doctor, two nurses and a secretary, will go to Warsaw, Budapest and Rendsburg, Germany, to begin vaccinating their populations, children first.

* In the U.S., it is No. 7.

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