[Tuberculosis in Poland in 2005]

Tuberculosis has been a major health problem in Poland for many years. In 2005y. decrease of tuberculosis notification rates in Poland has continued. In this year 9280 tuberculosis cases notified, incidence rate was 24.39 per 100,000 population with the large differences in notification rates between voivodships/region from 14.0 in the West to 36.1 in the East. The incidence in 2005 was 2.4% lower than in previous years and 39.0% lover than in 1996 y. Pulmonary cases represented 91.2% of all TB cases of which 61.2% were bacteriologically confirmed. Low proportion--8.8% extrapulmonary TB cases which continues for many years may indicates inadequacies in diagnosis and registration of this form. Children TB cases--99 incidence 1.6--represented 1.1% of all TB cases notified in Poland. The incidence of tuberculosis increases with age from 1.6 in children to 50.3 among 65 and older. Median age group--50-54. The incidence of men 32.9 is two times higher than in women--16.7 and in rural population higher than in urban respectively 25.6 and 23.5. Among of all TB pulmonary cases were 293 cases--about 3.5% all TB cases--with resistance to at least one drug. In these cases were about 80 MDR TB cases. Every years registered a dozen cases among HIV/AIDS patients. There were 806 deaths due to tuberculosis from tuberculosis pulmonary 777--and 29 from extrapulmonary tuberculosis reported in 2005 i.e. 3.4 per 100,000. Mortality among males 3.4 was four times higher than among females--0.9. 44% of all deaths were in patients 65 year of age and older. Since many years the TB mortality is of the order of 0.2% of total mortality and more than 1/3 of all deaths from infectious diseases.

In last decade decrease incidence of TB has continued. The incidence of tuberculosis in Poland was about two times higher than mean incidence for enlarge European Union. The distance between Poland and EU countries with lowest incidence TB is estimated 20-25 years.