Tuberculosis notifications in Australia, 2011

The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System received 1,385 tuberculosis (TB) notifications in 2011, representing a rate of 6.2 cases per 100,000 population. While Australia has maintained a rate of 5 to 6 cases per 100,000 for TB since the mid-1980s, there has been a steady increase in incidence over the past decade. In 2011, Australia's overseas-born population continued to represent the majority of TB notifications (88%) with a notification rate of 20.2 per 100,000. The incidence of TB in the Australian-born Indigenous population has fluctuated over the last decade and showed no clear trend; however, in 2011 the notification rate was 4.9 per 100,000, which is a notable decrease from the 7.5 per 100,000 recorded in 2010. The incidence of TB in the Australian-born non-Indigenous population has continued to remain low at 0.9 per 100,000. Australia continued to record only a small number of multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases nationally (n=25), all of which were identified in the overseas-born population. To ensure that Australia can retain its low TB rate and work toward reducing rates further, it is essential that Australia maintains good centralised national TB reporting to monitor trends and identify at-risk populations, and continues to contribute to global TB control initiatives.