Davos of Ghana? Local, national and international perspectives on tuberculosis treatment and control (ca. 1920-1965)

Tuberculosis was one of the major causes of death in the Gold Coast throughout the later colonial period. Measures against tuberculosis were introduced in the 1920s and 1930s. They were, however, limited in scope and focused almost exclusively on the mining areas and towns. Isolation and treatment of cases was limited to a few facilities. Only from the 1950s onwards a comprehensive approach to controlling the disease followed. At the same time, at the mission hospital in Agogo, a rural town in Ashanti, tuberculosis was seen as a possible field in which the hospital could specialise in order to secure and justify its existence. Soon, plans for a new tuberculosis centre attached to the hospital were elaborated. However, in the context of the changing predominant anti-tuberculosis strategies and the development of tuberculosis control in the decolonising Gold Coast and Ghana respectively, such a project did not find the external support it needed from government and other sources.