Incidence and Prevalence of Tuberculosis in Iran and Neighboring Countries

Tuberculosis is one of the major public health concerns in many countries, however the available and effective treatment is known. Tuberculosis typically determined with socio-economic problems such as war, malnutrition and HIV prevalence. In Iran, many progresses are carried to control tuberculosis but, different factors such as immigration from neighboring countries are affective to tuberculosis infection.
In this paper, the incidence and prevalence of tuberculosis is evaluated in different regions of Iran and neighboring countries.
The data are collected from different and valid sources such as Scopus, Pubmed and also many reports from world health organization (WHO) and center of disease control and prevention (CDC) for a period of 25 years (1990 - 2015) evaluated for Iran and neighboring countries.
This study as a descriptive- analytical research is conducted cross- sectional among Iran and neighboring countries since 1990. The information is obtained from exact and valid informative data from web of sciences. The east and west border countries of Iran which are faced with war and immigration in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are source of tuberculosis infection that effect on tuberculosis prevalence in Iran. The data were analyzed by SPSS 22 and Excel 2013.
The incidence of tuberculosis in Iran has been decreased because of many controlling actions such as BCG vaccination, electronic reporting system for tuberculosis and free access to tuberculosis medication. Some of Iran neighboring countries such as Tajikistan and Pakistan have the highest incidence of tuberculosis which known as a challenge for tuberculosis control in Iran while Saudi Arabia and Turkey have the lowest incidence.