Global Epidemiology of Tuberculosis

Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB), one of the most widespread infectious diseases, is the leading cause of death in the world and has been known in humans since ancient time. The epidemiological trends of tuberculosis since the pre-chemotherapy era to the current both in developed countries and developing countries are presented in this review. A declining trend of magnitude of TB have been observed in most of the developed countries since the beginning of 20 ^th century with modification of life standard but after the introduction of chemotherapy, it changed in to upward trend because of HIV epidemic, socio-demographic factors and emergence of multi-drug resistance TB (MDR-TB). However, no such downward trend was observed in most of the developing countries including Ethiopia even after the introduction of chemotherapy, and those factors that have been led to increase the epidemiology of TB in developed countries further also led to worsening of the problem in developing countries. The Global incidence of TB showed a decline between the years of 2000-2006. However, it will be expected to increase further in the coming years, more significantly in the countries of Africa and South-East Asia including Ethiopia because of change in demographic factors (population growth), increase in the global incidence of untreatable drug resistance strain of mycobacterium and changes in age structure of the population and increase in HIV sero- prevalence rates, especially in developing countries of South-east Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. This calls for more intensive and sustained efforts at decreasing the reservoir of infection and reducing transmission through increasing health service facility and decreased contributing factories, run all the research activities will up-front in developing new tools and strategies adequate to overcome the challenges in TB control