„Последният кръстоносен поход“. Международните контексти на борбата с туберкулозата в България до средата на XX век
„The Last Crusade“. International Contexts of the Fight against Tuberculosis in Bulgaria up to the Middle of the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: In Bulgaria tuberculosis considerably began to be viewed as a social problem at the end of the 19th century and all experts were on the same opinion: the fight against tuberculosis had to be preventive, that meant: improvement of hygiene and labor conditions, overall information about the disease aimed to reach widest circles of the population and last not least, medical treatment. In the early 20th century in Bulgaria 20 000 persons annually died from tuberculosis, which was one of the highest percentages in Europe at that time. The First World War marks a turning point in the overall orientation of Bulgarian antituberculosis efforts. The nation’s arsenal of dispensaries, sanatoriums, and related facilities — its “war on tuberculosis”, in the reformers’ military terminology – was subject to increasingly anxious inventory and scrutiny. Bulgarian reformers (doctors and hygienists) placed also special emphasis on personal responsibility in the fight against tuberculosis. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the state started to introduce standards and common bureaucratic rules of social work and centralized the public health care, including the fight against tuberculosis. International models and standards influenced the tuberculosis control policies in Bulgaria – especially the activities of the League of Nations Health Organisation, the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Near East Foundation.

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