Romania comes first in EU on number of tuberculosis patients

The number of tuberculosis cases in Romania have been decreasing, but the country still comes first in the European Union. Over a quarter of the TB cases in the EU came from Romania in 2010, according to a recent report from the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom together represent half of EU's TB caseload. There were 12,400 new cases of TB confirmed in Romania in 2011, down from the peak of 16,800 cases in 2006 and the trend is still downward. There were 21,000 cases of TB in Romania in 2010. The country had the highest number of children under 4 with TB: 306 in 2010. Second came Spain, with 218. Country-specific rates in 2010 ranged from four TB cases per 100,000 inhabitants in Greece to 98 in Romania. "Despite their recent progress, however, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic countries still have notification rates several times higher than those in the low-incidence countries," according to the report. Read the full report here. The disease’s symptoms include persistent cough that lasts more than 2-3 weeks, fever, sweating at night, loss of appetite, and weight loss. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com (photo source: Sxc.hu)