[International Standards of Tuberculosis Care (ISTC)--comments from the German point of view].

The "International Standards for Tuberculosis Care" (ISTC) were developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and others to provide internationally agreed and, if possible, evidence-based standards for tuberculosis care including the care by private providers who are not part of national tuberculosis programmes or health-care systems. Hence, the ISTC primarily address resource-restrained countries with high tuberculosis prevalence. In this article, the German translation of the 21 standards from 2009 is presented - addressing diagnostic and therapeutic standards, co-infection (especially with HIV) and public-health issues. The accompanying comments show how these standards have to be modified for Germany due to the medical resources available here and country-specific characteristics respectively. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.