Over a three-year period, in 2,700 children aged two weeks to 19 years in a South Philadelphia ghetto, the new case rate for tuberculosis was 177 per 100,000 per year and the rate for new conversions was 673 per 100,000 per year. Children with recent conversions or with active disease were, on the average, slightly older and had older mothers and more adults and siblings at home than the rest of the child population. Parents or other residents of the home were the contacts. Children 10 to 14 years of age were the most frequently affected. Children who had been receiving continuous comprehensive health care for more than three years had the same attack rates as new children in the program.
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