Trends in Tuberculosis Incidence in the Australian-Born in Victoria: Opportunities and Challenges to Elimination

Abstract

Australia is a low tuberculosis incidence country. In the setting of increasing migration, we aimed to investigate the epidemiology and trends of tuberculosis in the Australian-born population in the state of Victoria between 1992 and 2017. We performed a retrospective descriptive analysis of demographic, clinical and outcome data extracted from a centralized notifiable disease database. The mean incidence of tuberculosis was 1.19 cases per 100,000 population per year with a small but significant reduction of 0.98% per year. The median age of cases decreased from 67.5 years in 1994 to 17 years in 2017. Among 0⁻14 year-olds, there was an increase from 0.13 cases per 100,000 population in 1996..