DutchNews.nl - Immigration drives up tuberculosis figures

Immigration drives up tuberculosis figures

Tuesday 26 January 2010

The number of people with tuberculosis in the Netherlands went up for the first time in years in 2009, due almost entirely to the increase in immigration from countries where TB is prevalent.

In total, over 1160 were diagnosed with the disease, two-thirds of whom were born abroad. For example, resistant strains of TB are common in Eastern Europe, the national TB foundation said.

But the number of infectious cases of TB was stable at around 210 cases and the death rate was also constant at around 20 cases a year, the foundation said.

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Readers' comments

One would have thought that screening for illnesses such as tuberculosis obligatory, regarding immigration.

If not then possible, a period of quarantine depending on the country of origin, no?

By stevie | January 26, 2010 2:02 PM

That is scary, how come nobody is acting responsible enough to screen these cases before allowing people out in the population?

By Sandra | January 27, 2010 5:53 AM

Frankly, the reactions to this article confirm how absolutely useless and misleading these statistics are. Pure scaremongering...

By appalled | January 27, 2010 6:57 PM

- NL screens non-western inmmigrants for TB
- Part of Eastern Europe is now inside the EU, thus no more screening for these people
- Result number of people with tuberculosis went up, two-thirds of them were not born in NL.
- Hopefully the quality of life in Eastern Europe will rise as well, and then we all will be happy.

By Benito Camelas | January 28, 2010 1:50 PM

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