World TB Day

Chicago's TB Hospital

Chicago’s TB Hospital

Would you be surprised to learn that “tuberculosis today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of nearly one-and-a-half million people each year*.”?

I certainly was.

Tuberculosis impacted my family tree, taking the lives of my maternal grandfather’s sister Myrtle (1917) and his father James Walton (1911).

Others in my tree were also affected.

My second great-grandmother’s 53 year old brother Klas Alfrid Landstrom died at Chicago’s Municipal Tuberculosis Sanatorium in 1923:

2015 03-24 1923 08-18 DC Landstrom Alfred WM

I thought TB was a disease of the past. It isn’t.

 

*Source: Stop TB Partnership

2 thoughts on “World TB Day

  1. I have been really shocked to see how many of my relatives died from TB. The thought of a resurgence as the bacteria become more resistant is frightening.

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