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A slight increase was recently recorded. However, this is likely to be due to a kind of “catch-up effect” in the wake of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This emerges from data from the Agency for Health and Food Security (AGES) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC/Stockholm).
“We had exactly 388 new cases of tuberculosis in 2020. Then in 2021 there were 396, in 2022 378 and finally in 2023 there were 422 cases,” said Dr. Alexander Indra, head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at AGES, in conversation with the APA. He recently presented the latest information at an AGES symposium in the run-up to World Tuberculosis Day next Sunday (March 24).
“The” disease of the poor
Even with the 422 TB cases in Austria in 2023, the situation is literally “classes” better than around two decades ago (2004), when 1,079 diseases were registered. Tuberculosis is “the” disease of the poor, the homeless, refugees and war victims. The picture has changed here. While among the 1,079 new cases registered in 2004, there were exactly 629 patients whose country of birth was Austria (450 whose country of birth was different), in 2016 there were 432 patients whose country of birth was not Austrian (202 whose country of birth was Austria) out of a total of 634 cases in 2016. In 2022, the lowest value to date in this population group was recorded with 106 cases among people whose country of birth was Austria (266 patients of foreign origin). Indra: “The slight increase in 2023 (a total of 422 cases; note) can be seen both in ‘endemic’ (132 cases in people from Austria; note) and in ‘imported’ diseases (290).”
Conclusion for the expert: “The situation can be seen as relaxed. The system for detecting tuberculosis diseases, which works well in Austria, is working.” Early diagnosis also ensures effective therapy and therefore hardly any further infections. In Austria, a TB incidence (cases per 100,000 people per year) of 4.6 was registered in 2023 (2004: 13.2); among people whose country of birth was Austria, the value was 1.9 last year (2004: 8.9) among people with a non-Austrian country of birth at 14.9 (2004: 39.0).
Slight increase in 2022
A very similar development was registered for the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). In 2013 there were still around 55,000 reported cases of tuberculosis. In 2020 there were around 33,000, in 2022 there would be around 35,000. Overall, however, the number of tuberculosis cases fell by 39 percent in Europe from 2013 to 2022.
In 2021, the proportion of people with tuberculosis and a place of birth outside the EU/EEA was 33.8 percent. This also shows that the majority of tuberculosis cases come from the EU/EEA. Social conditions, the functioning of a healthcare system, etc. also show major differences within the EU/EEA.
There is also a proverbial relaxation in the number of multi-resistant or extremely resistant tuberculosis diseases in Austria: in 2023, seven multi-resistant diseases were registered in people born abroad (one in a patient from Austria), as well as one patient with extremely resistant TB pathogens (different country of birth). This also represents a sharp decline compared to previous years (e.g. 2004 or 2009). Incidentally, in 1954, almost 12,000 TB cases were registered in Austria. At that time, the first effective drug therapy for tuberculosis (streptomycin) had just been established.
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Source: Nachrichten
