The refugees and the fight against tuberculosis

Tuberculosis was the most serious disease affecting the urban centres of interwar Greece. In Greece, tuberculosis was considered to be an affliction of the aristocrats until 1882, when the contagious nature of the disease was discovered. However, at the turn of the century, as the urban population, and particularly urban working class population, started rising, the disease became strongly associated with these socioeconomic strata and their unhygienic living conditions.

Policies against tuberculosis were systematised in 1917 when the Ministry of Welfare was established. It was a time when the first refugee populations were arriving and many sick soldiers were returning, exacerbating the problem in the large urban centres and especially Athens. The mass arrival of refugees in 1922 and their horrible living conditions, which favoured the transmission of the disease, turned tuberculosis into a major social issue. The opening of sanatoriums and the improvement of the living conditions for the working class were the main policies for controlling and managing the spread of the disease. The link between tuberculosis and lower socioeconomic classes gave rise to language and behaviours that presented these classes as a danger not only to public health, but also to the national economy. In this entry, we present a series of newspaper articles on tuberculosis in Athens.

On 21.09.1922, in an article in the newspaper Empros [Forward] entitled ‘The danger of tuberculosis’, Alexandros Kalantzakos, director of the ‘Sotiria’ sanatorium, published a letter which stressed the need of taking measures for the homeless tubercular patients. Since building clinics, hospitals and sanatoriums was expensive and time-consuming, Kalantzakos suggested accommodating the tubercular soldiers and refugees in wooden huts erected in areas which would meet the necessary climate standards. In this way, model ‘workers’ settlements’ would be established in rural areas, where the patients’ families could find work in agriculture and thus improve their financial situation.

A year and a half later, an article in Rizospastis [The Radical] on 9.1.1924 accused the government and the responsible developers of building settlements which provided unsuitable housing and inadequate sanitary conditions. The newspaper’s critique was accompanied by the writer’s deep concern about tuberculosis: ‘Gradually, every settlement will become an endless sanatorium’.

At the beginning of 1926, the local newspaper I Kifisia published an official request by a committee of Amarousio (Marousi) residents submitted to the local department head of the Hygiene Directorate of the Ministry of Welfare. The committee requested the removal of tubercular patients from Amarousio so that the wider area could be fully sanitised. The request was linked to the local community’s interwar plan to turn Marousi into a resort for healthy Athenians.

Other articles from Athenian newspapers in 1929 (Empros, 4.1.1929 and Patris 6.3.1929) featured the work of the Anti-tuberculosis Society and described the conditions in the ‘Sotiria’ sanatorium. In the first article, the Anti-tuberculosis Society responded to a previous article published in the newspaper accusing the Society of squandering funds. The Society defended its work and produced the relevant data. The Society’s Diagnostic Institute had examined 4,557 tubercular patients and school students free of charge. The Society had also established a children’s clinic in Ampelokipoi, where pre-tubercular and tubercular children from the neighbouring refugee settlements could be examined. The second article, an extensive, front-page feature, presented the conditions in the ‘Sotiria’ sanatorium and the temporary dwellings built in the area surrounding it to house destitute and refugee tubercular patients.

The living conditions in the refugee neighbourhoods of Gazi were featured in the newspaper I Pali ton Taxeon [Class Struggle] on 13.3.1931. According to the article, 2,000 people lived in the area, all refugees from Pontus, Smyrna, Attaleia (Antalya) and Makri (Fethiye), who were offered houses in the Pyritidopoieio settlement. Unable to buy them, the refugees remained in Gazi. The houses there were made out of wooden planks and tin containers and the rooms were divided in two to accommodate more families. The area had no sanitation infrastructure and there was a single lavatory for the entire settlement. As a result, diseases spread through the population, often developing into epidemics.