Romania tops the EU rankings of tuberculosis incidence, but is making progress in controlling the disease, president of the Romanian Society of Pneumology Florin Mihaltan said on Monday, addressing a conference dedicated to World Tuberculosis Day.
"When we talk about tuberculosis stats, we are cited as the EU country most affected by tuberculosis (...), but they forget that there has been extremely visible progress in recent years, that we started from an extremely painful legacy back in '89, when again we were singled out as having a lot of tuberculosis cases, and there is currently a visible decrease (...) in the incidence of new cases, in the incidence in children, in the death rate, the progress is extremely visible," said Mihaltan.
He also drew attention to the differences between various counties as regards the prevalence of tuberculosis.
"(...) If you look at the map of the county development you will find that it perfectly overlaps with the prevalence of tuberculosis in that county," explained Mihaltan.
According to a release from the Romanian Society of Pneumology and the Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumophtisiology, in 2024 the incidence of tuberculosis in Romania was 44.3 per 100,000 population, and in children it was 10.8 per 100,000, but despite this, progress has been made in keeping the disease in check.
The number of tuberculosis cases has decreased by 69% in the last two decades. In 2002 there were over 30,000 new cases and relapses in 100,000 population, whereas in 2024 the number had dropped to approximately 8,400 in 100,000 population. The decrease is not uniform in all regions, being influenced by access to medical services, social conditions and measures taken to control the disease.
In children up to 14 years of age, the number of tuberculosis cases has decreased by 77.5% in the last two decades. In 2002 there were over 1,800 cases per 100,000 children, and in 2024 this number plunged to approximately 330 per 100,000 children.
In the last 20 years, Romania's death rate from tuberculosis went down by approximately 69.5%. If in 2001 there were 10.5 deaths per 100,000 population, the figure dropped to 3.2 per 100,000 in 2024.
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