[Tuberculosis in Poland in 1997]

The paper presents the epidemiological situation of TB in Poland in 1997--the fourth consecutive year of decline in TB incidence after three years (1991-1993) of increase. In 1997 there were 13,967 newly registered TB cases, of which 1,578 were relapses. The incidence was 36.1 per 100,000 population, of which 32.0 were the new cases and 4.1 relapses. Relapses represented 11.3% of all newly registered cases. The incidence in 1997 was 9.3% lower than in 1996. The rate of decline was 2 times higher than in previous two years (3.9% and 4.2% respectively). Between provinces the range in incidence was 20.1 to 58.2. Among the total number of newly registered cases there were 7,484 (19.4 per 100,000) bacteriologically confirmed, of which 4,117 cases were sputum smear positive. The proportion of bacteriologically culture positive cases was 53.6 and of sputum smear positive--29.5 which is rather low, but similar to previous years. 95.9% of TB cases the connected respiratory system. Low proportion (4.1%) of non respiratory TB, which continues for many years, may indicate inadequacies in diagnosis and registration of this form of disease. The incidence of TB increases with age, from 1.9 in children to 69.9 in those over 65 years of age. The proportion of cases in the age group 20-44 years is still high (38.6%). The incidence in men (49.8) is two times higher than in women (23.4), and in rural population higher than in urban--38.2 and 34.9 respectively. The prevalence of tuberculosis at the end of 1997 was 41.4 (16,023 cases) of which 52.4% were bacteriologically confirmed cases (8,397 cases). In the latter group there were 281 cases bacteriologically positive for longer than one year, and 469 cases resistant to at least 1 drug. The proportion of resistant cases (5.6%) is similar to previous years and does not seen to influence the overall effectiveness of chemotherapy.