1,000 cases a day as resistant TB ‘ravages’ Europe
With World TB Day falling next Tuesday — March 24 —new data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDPC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) for Europe shows that cases fell by 6% between 2012 and 2013.
About 360,000 Europeans developed TB in 2013 but, even with an annual 6% decline, Europe will not be TB-free until the next century.
There has been a sustained decline in cases over the last decade but rates of multi-drug resistant TB remains at very high levels.
WHO regional director for Europe, Zsuzsanna Jakab, said only 50% of an estimated 75,000 multi-drug resistant TB patients were found in 2013 and just half were successfully cured.
“Multi-drug resistant TB is still ravaging the European region, making it the most affected area of the entire world,” he said.
ECDC director, Marc Sprenger, said the EU countries were not all progressing in the same way and faced significant challenges in their TB control efforts.
“In most low-incident countries, rates are stable or going down only very slowly and the majority of patients are of foreign origin,” he said.
There were 328 cases of TB reported in Ireland last year — 7.1 per 100,000 — the lowest notification rate recorded since surveillance began in 1998.
The number of TB cases reported in Ireland has declined since the 1990s with 604 cases reported in 1992.
The decline has been even more considerable since the early 1950s when 7,000 cases of TB were notified annually.
Ireland is among the low-incidence countries in within the EU and European Economic Area.
However, there is concern that multi-drug resistant TB continues to be most prevalent in the three Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Also, TB is one of the diseases that kills most people with HIV and this deadly combination is increasing in Europe. The prevalence of HIV among TB cases throughout Europe increased from 3.4% in 2008 to 7.8% in 2013.
Of the 60,296 TB cases notified in 2012 where there was a treatment outcome, 44,318 (73.5%) were treated successfully and 4,571 died (7.6%).
Of 1,386 multi-drug resistant cases notified in 2011 where there was a treatment outcome,524 (37.8%) were treated successfully and 235 (17%) died.
A national TB surveillance report from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre for last year found that 40% of the 328 cases it was made aware of last year were foreign born. Men accounted for 54% of all cases.
The HPSC was notified of two cases of multi-drug resistant TB and both were foreign-born and had no previous history of TB.
There were 11 deaths, with TB reported as the cause in three cases.
Read more of today’s news here
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
