[The estimates of the future trend of tuberculosis incidence and the control programs for its elimination]

In most European and other industrialized countries, it is estimated that tuberculosis would be eliminated around 2030, and in the U.S. and Western European countries, new tuberculosis strategies were developed to eliminate tuberculosis. The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) in Japan too, has also introduced some new tuberculosis control plans and goals. In Japan, it is estimated that the elimination of tuberculosis would be achieved around 2060, and MOHW has set the final goal for the elimination of tuberculosis by the year 2030. MOHW has also set two interim goals by the year 2000, i.e., (1) to achieve the tuberculosis incidence of below 20 per 100,000 population, (2) to achieve the tuberculosis incidence in children to the level of elimination, that is below 0.1 per 100,000. Wishing the success of these plans, the author tried to examine the possibility of achieving the goals by 2000. The decline of tuberculosis incidence rate in Japan has been gradually slower since 1977. However, the declining trend has become almost constant since around 1983, although it is still very slowly decreasing. Therefore, assuming that the future incidence rates will continue at the same decreasing speed as that of average annual decline rate during the last 10-year period from 1983 to 1992, the incidence rate in Japan in 2000 would be estimated to become 30.9 per 100,000 (95% C.I.; 29.8-31.7), and the incidence rate in children would be 0.87 per 100,000 (95% C.I.; 0.71-1.05). Examining the possibility of acceleration of the declining speed of tuberculosis incidence, it was discussed that there could be a possibility of removing such cases as the preventable cases, non-tuberculosis and inactive tuberculosis cases from newly registered cases in advance.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)