ECDC-WHO/EURO twitter chat on tuberculosisArchived

Currently, about one third of the world’s population is infected with TB.

While the WHO European Region continues to mark a decline in the overall notification of TB cases in both European Union (EU) and non-EU countries, the joint report Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2012 highlights the different epidemiological pictures within the Region.

There is evidence for concern about the spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB), the persistence of TB among children and a challenge for low-incidence countries to continue the progress towards TB elimination.

Even though many EU countries have entered a low-incidence phase, the incidence of TB can be several times higher in urban settings compared to rural areas, due to a disproportionate accumulation of disease in certain vulnerable populations often concentrated in metropolitan settings.

The higher TB incidence seen in big cities of Western Europe is an expression of a declining epidemic, which poses new challenges and needs to be addressed in order to completely eliminate TB in EU.

On the occasion of World Tuberculosis Day on 24 March, WHO/Europe and the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) are jointly hosting a live Twitter chat on Tuesday, 20 March 2012 to focus on these issues and share and analyse the latest surveillance data to be published that week.

Twitter chat details

Hosts The Twitter chat was jointly hosted by tuberculosis experts Dr Andreas Sandgren from ECDC and Dr Masoud Dara from WHO/Europe.

When 20 March 15:00-16:00 UTC/GMT

Where/how: Questions were sent in the form of tweets to @ECDC_EU or @WHO_Europe, using the hashtag #TBchat

Questions for the experts on our Facebook pages:

WHO/Europe on Facebook

ECDC on Facebook

Topics

• Joint ECDC/WHO TB report 2012
• Childhood TB
• Urban TB control: the new challenge of elimination
• General information about TB