Surveillance of tuberculosis in low prevalence countries where tuberculosis is in decline.

Abstract

In developed countries, the risk of tuberculosis infection is often less than 0.05%, and the majority of diseases is caused by remote infections, so that the ratio of incidence to risk of infection is now becoming bigger than that in developing countries. Surveillance on the trend of incidence, surveillance of tuberculosis group infections and surveillance of diagnostic and treatment measures, especially that of delay in case-finding, are considered as important functions of tuberculosis surveillance in developed countries.