National tuberculin test survey in Ethiopia

To plan and implement an effective National Tuberculosis Control Programme, it is essential to know the incidence of tuberculosis. Thus a tuberculin survey was conducted in Ethiopia between December 1987 and April 1990. A sample of 55 children, aged 6 to 10 years was selected from each of 480 representative clusters from 16 weredas (districts), which were chosen randomly. A total of 26,529 children were given intradermal tuberculin test and the results read in 26,269. There were 23,595 children who had no BCG vaccination of whom 2,503 (10.6%) were positive; this gives a "risk of infection" of 1.4% which is lower than the 3.0% reported for the same age group during the tuberculin survey in 1953-1955, suggesting that there has been a reduction in the tuberculin test positivity rate.