Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2015: surveillance report

This is the seventh report launched jointly by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe following on from reports under the EuroTB project, established in 1996. Despite notable progress in the past decade, tuberculosis (TB) is still a public health concern in most of the countries within the WHO European Region. An estimated 360 000 Europeans developed TB in 2013 – 1000 people on a daily basis. According to new data published by the ECDC and the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the number of TB cases dropped by about 6% compared to 2012, continuing a sustained decline over the last decade across the Region. However, rates of multidrug-resistant TB remain at very high levels, particularly in the so-called 18 high-priority countries, which see 85% of all new TB cases in the Region. These countries also account for most of the 38 000 TB-related deaths in 2013.