[Description of epidemic features and control status on tuberculosis in China, 1990-2017]

Objective: To analyse the epidemic features and programs of control on tuberculosis (TB) in China from 1990 to 2017 to provide references and evidence on prevention and control of the disease. Methods: We used data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 to analyse the trends of incident and death cases of TB in China from 1990 to 2017. Results: In 2017, there were an estimated 831.0 thousand (age-standardized incidence: 54.18 per 100 000 population) incident cases and 39.3 thousand (age-standardised mortality: 2.17 per 100 000 population) deaths of TB in the country. The incident cases and deaths of TB decreased by 51.05% and 76.24% compared with the numbers in 1990, respectively. The average annual declining rates on incident cases and deaths of TB were 2.61% and 5.18%, respectively, from 1990 to 2017. The number of incident cases of TB decreased from 833.6 thousand in 2016 to 831.0 thousand in 2017 (decreased by 0.31%). The number of deaths of TB decreased from 40.7 thousand in 2016 to 39.3 thousand in 2017 (decreased by 3.44%). The number of incident cases and deaths of drug-sensitive TB showed a declining trend from 1990 to 2017. However, the number of incident cases and deaths showed first increased and then decreased trends for both multidrug-resistant TB (MDRTB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDRTB) in the same period. The number of incident cases of XDRTB increased from 2 979 in 2016 to 3 018 in 2017, with an increasing rate by 1.32%. The number of deaths of XDRTB increased from 819 in 2016 to 829 in 2017, with an increase rate by 1.22%. Conclusions: China made substantial progress in reducing both the TB incidence and mortality from 1990 to 2017 but the rate of decline became slow in the later years. We noticed that the increase of TB caused by XDR-TB had been increasing which called for special attention.