Romania: TB alert

In his famous novel ‘Barefoot,’ prominent Romanian writer Zaharia Stancu (1902-1974) has a terrible fragment: two children from a village located in the plains of Teleorman County were playing together. One has a piece of bread, which he starts eating in front of his friend. In those old times, a century ago, bread was a luxury for the Romanian peasant. When the other boy inquires about the provenance of the miracle “treat,” the boy says that his parents gave it as alms for his brother, who had recently died of tuberculosis. The friend asks for a little bit of the bread, making the terrible promise that he will return the favour soon, when his smaller sister will die of the same disease.For a very long time in history, tuberculosis – or TB – also known in the old times as ‘consumption’ was ravaging Romanian. In peasants’ families with 7-8 children, the disease was taking a heavy toll, so if one or two eventually escaped, it was still a miracle.