IT WAS a ‘five-week war on TB’, as our newspaper reported on this day in 1957.
Mass health programmes – like the kind ongoing in Glasgow and around the country at the moment – are nothing new.
Sixty-five years ago today, workers queued up to be x-rayed for tuberculosis.
Glasgow Corporation had initially set a target of 250,000 residents being X-rayed, but the campaign surpassed their expectations. The final figures showed that 712,860 people were X-rayed – more than 85 per cent of the population of the city aged over 14.
The final Friday’s total of 46,077 established what was then a world record for one day’s record in any city.
“The figures we have reached”, said councillor John Mains, convener of the health and welfare committee, “will go down in medical history as a world record and a great achievement.”
At the end of the campaign, thanksgiving services were held at Glasgow Cathedral and St Andrew’s Cathedral, and a civic reception at the City Chambers paid tribute to 600 workers involved in delivering it.
“Your mission is completed,” Mr Mains told them. “You have blasted the scourge of tuberculosis from Glasgow.”
The campaign had caught the imagination of the public and the media from the beginning. Rangers stars George Young, George Niven and Sammy Baird, and Celtic’s Charlie Tully all queued to be X-rayed. Tex Ritter, the cowboy star, who was appearing at the Empire at the time, also took his turn.
Do you remember the TP X-Ray campaign in Glasgow? Get in touch to share your memories.
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