Secular Trends in Tuberculosis during the Second Epidemiological Transition: A Swiss Perspective

Copyright © 2013 Kara L. Holloway et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Com-mons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro-vided the original work is properly cited. The second epidemiologic transition is defined as “the age of receding pandemics”, wherein mortality de-clines, life expectancy increases, and population growth occurs. The major causes of death also shifted from predominantly acute infectious diseases to degenerative and “man-made ” diseases (Omran, 1983). The aim of this study was to determine the timing of the transition in Zürich (Switzerland) and to investi-gate patterns of tuberculosis mortality during this period. This is one of the first studies to specifically in-vestigate the timing of the second transition in Zürich, Switzerland. The data sources for this study were Swiss records of mortality from the Staatsarchiv (Canton Archives), Stadtarchiv (City Archives) and a published volume of State Statistics (Historische Statistik der Schweiz). The changes in mortality through time were addressed for all causes of death in the city of Zürich for the years 1893 to 1933 that is, the time including the second epidemiological transition. After 1933 the structure of the mortality data collec-tion changed as the responsibility was transferred away from the canton archives. Mortality from tuber-culosis was then examined in greater detail and compared with changes in living standards as well a