Tuberculosis notifications in Australia, 2012 and 2013.

The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System received 1,317 tuberculosis (TB) notifications in 2012 and 1,263 notifications in 2013. This represents a rate of 5.8 per 100,000 population in 2012 and 5.5 per 100,000 population in 2013 and a reversal of the upward trend in TB incidence reported since 2007. In 2012 and 2013, Australia's overseas-born population continued to represent the majority of TB notifications with an incidence rate of 19.5 per 100,000 and 18.4 per 100,000 respectively. The incidence of TB in the Australian-born Indigenous population has fluctuated over the last decade; however, it remained reasonably steady in 2012 and 2013 with an incidence rate of 4.5 per 100,000 and 4.6 per 100,000 respectively. The incidence of TB in the Australian-born non-Indigenous population has continued to remain low at 0.7 per 100,000 in 2012 and 0.8 per 100,000 in 2013. Australia continued to record only a small number of multi-drug resistant TB cases nationally (2012: n=20; 2013: n=22) of which nearly all were identified in the overseas-born population. This report demonstrates excellent and sustained control of TB in Australia and reflects Australia's commitment to reducing the global burden of TB. This work is copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce the whole or part of this work in unaltered form for your own personal use or, if you are part of an organisation, for internal use within your organisation, but only if you or your organisation do not use the reproduction for any commercial purpose and retain this copyright notice and all disclaimer notices as part of that reproduction. Apart from rights to use as permitted by the Copyright Act 1968 or allowed by this copyright notice, all other rights are reserved and you are not allowed to reproduce the whole or any part of this work in any way (electronic or otherwise) without first being given the specific written permission from the Commonwealth to do so. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights are to be sent to the Online, Services and External Relations Branch, Department of Health, GPO Box 9848, Canberra ACT 2601, or by email to copyright@health.gov.au.