Trend of TB incidence rate and its treatment success in Kurdistan, Iran from 2000 to 2012

As a chronic bacterial disease, tuberculosis is one of the global major health problems. Curb of this disease is one of the Millennium Development Goals. The aim of this study was to evaluate the trends of tuberculosis and its management from 2000 to 2012 in the Kurdistan province, Iran.

In this study national surveillance system data of TB was used.

The mean incidence rate of TB in Kurdistan from 2000 to 2012 was 13.6 per one hundred thousand populations. These rates were 5.13, 2.8, and 5.3 in a hundred thousand for positive and negative smears and extra pulmonary cases respectively. The highest incidence rates of TB were 26 and 18.8 per hundred thousand people between years 2000 and 2001 respectively. There was a rapid decline from 2000 to 2003 in TB incidence reaching 10.8 in 2003. A steady state trend was seen in TB incidence since 2003 and it was 10.5 cases in a hundred thousand in 2012. The average incidence of TB in women during these years was 3.1 times more than men. Based on treatment success indicators, negative smears percent after three months and recovery of positive smears were 60.27 and 87.69 percent in year 2012 respectively. The percentage of failures in this year was 4.69.

Decrease of TB incidence from 2000 to 2003 has been impressive. However, this decline was not very sensible since 2003. Indicators of success in treatment have not changed a lot during these years. Since the nation-wide targets for TB prevention include identifying of 8 cases with positive-smear in one hundred thousand at least, recovery of 90% of the infected cases, and less treatment failure than 2%, there is still a lot of room for progress toward achieving these targets in Kurdistan province.