Global and Regional Burden and Trands - Based
on surveys of the prevalence of infection and of disease, on assessments of the
performance of surveillance systems and on death registrations, there were an
estimated 9.2 million new cases of TB in 2006, of which 4.1 million were
smear-positive. The WHO African region had the highest estimated incidence rate
(363 per 100,000 population), but the majority of TB patients live in the most
populous countries of Asia. Five countries – Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia,
and Pakistan – have almost half the world’s population (46%) and produced about
half (48%) of all new TB cases arising worldwide in 2006. Illustrates the
global distribution of new TB cases in 2006, in terms of numbers and rates per
100,000 population.
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map the spread of Tuberculosis |
Much
of the work of the WHO and partners focuses on the 22 countries known as the
high-burden countries (HBCs). These are the countries which, in 2002, were
estimated to have had the highest numbers of incident TB cases in the year
2000: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, China, the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Philippines, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda,
the United Republic of Tanzania, Viet Nam and Zimbabwe. Changes
in estimates due to new data or techniques, and likely changes in incidence
rates and population sizes, mean that this list no longer exactly matches the
list of the 22 countries with the largest number of new cases each year, but it
is still true that, between them, the HBCs account for 80% of new TB cases
arising annually. shows the estimated incidence and prevalence of TB and
mortality from TB for 2006. Globally an estimated 1.7 million people died from
TB in 2006, 231,000 of them infected with HIV.
Estimates
of TB incidence, prevalence and mortality are uncertain, and rely to varying
degrees on assumptions about the quality of surveillance data, about the
quality and impact of treatment and about the duration of disease and case-fatality
rates. New methods for evaluating the burden of TB and impact of control
are needed. In our view these should be based principally on assessments of the
quality of surveillance systems, backed by data obtained from surveys of the
prevalence of disease. These methods and the resulting data would help to meet
increasing demands from donor agencies (such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria) to demonstrate the impact of the activities which
they fund, and of international experts to increase the transparency
surrounding statistics provided through databases such as those of the WHO A recently established task force on
measurement of TB will guide work on improving estimates of the burden of TB
and the impact of control.
Estimates
of the incidence of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB; caused by strains of M.
tuberculosis resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampicin) are even more
uncertain than those of overall TB incidence. Drug susceptibility testing is
not widely available, although WHO guidelines for incorporating the diagnosis
and treatment of drug-resistant TB into the routine activities of national TB
control programmes are likely to lead to improved information about the
proportion of TB cases which are MDR. Current
estimates (based on multivariate analysis) are that 489,000 cases of MDR-TB
arose in 2006 among new and previously treated TB cases.
Extensively
drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) is defined as TB due to bacilli resistant to any
fluoroquinolone, and at least one of three injectable second-line drugs
(capreomycin, kanamycin, and amikacin), in addition to isoniazid and
rifampicin. The magnitude of the XDR-TB problem globally is not yet known.
Where the transmission of M. tuberculosis has been stable oincreasing for many
years, the incidence rate is relatively high among infants and young adults,
and most cases are due to recent infection or reinfection. As transmission
falls, the caseload shifts to older adults, and a higher proportion of cases
comes from the reactivation of latent infection. Therefore, in the countries of
Western Europe and North America that now have low incidence rates, indigenous
TB patients tend to be elderly, while patients who are immigrants from
highincidence countries tend to be young adults.
Allowing
for the difficultiesof diagnosing childhood TB, estimation exercises indicate
that there are relatively few cases among 0–14 year olds; while this age group
accounts for nearly 30% of the world’s population, it accounts for only 12% of
estimated cases. In 2006, countries reported 1.6 million smear-positive TB
cases among men, but only 884,000 among women. In some instanceswomen have
poorer access to diagnostic facilities, but
the broader pattern also reflects real epidemiological differences between the
sexes: while there is some evidence that young adult women (15–44 years) are
more likely than men to develop active TB following infection, this effect is
typically outweighed by the much higher exposure and infection rates among
adult men