The current tuberculosis situation in Germany and worldwide

In December 2023, the Robert Koch Institute published the annual report on the epidemiology of tuberculosis (TB) in Germany. In 2022, a total of 4,076 patients in Germany were newly diagnosed with tuberculosis. This corresponds to an incidence of 4.9 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. This marks, for the first time since 2016, a slight increase in TB case numbers, with a rise of 3.5%. Demographically, men were once again among the most frequently affected groups in 2022 (with an incidence of 6.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, almost twice as high as that of women), as well as young adults aged 25 to 29 years (incidence of 10.7 per 100,000). New cases among children also increased in parallel with those in adults: in 2022, a total of 190 children developed TB (incidence of 1.6 per 100,000), with the highest rates observed among children under 5 years of age.

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In parallel with the total number of cases, the incidence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB has also risen significantly. Compared to the previous year (2021: 77 cases, 2.6%), the number of MDR-TB cases more than doubled in 2022 (166 cases, 5.7%), with the highest proportion among patients born in one of the post-Soviet states (29.8% vs. 1.7% among those born in Germany). Pre-extensively drug-resistant (pre-XDR-TB) and XDR-TB occurred in 33 and 4 cases, respectively. The current statistics on tuberculosis cases are recorded by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which analyzes and publishes them in the Epidemiological Report at the end of the following year. On World Tuberculosis Day, which takes place each year on March 24, the RKI publishes a bulletin on tuberculosis presenting the statistically recorded case numbers of the previous year.

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According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), around 10.8 million people worldwide contracted tuberculosis in 2023. This still represents a slight increase of 0.2% compared to the previous year. The restrictions in the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis in many countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be cited as the reason for this. As a result, the number of deaths from tuberculosis also increased, but fell again slightly to 1.25 million deaths in 2023. This makes tuberculosis one of the ten most common causes of death worldwide. The countries most affected are India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where two thirds of the world's tuberculosis sufferers live.

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For the patients affected, the disease often means a social and financial problem in addition to the health impairment. The WHO has set itself the goal of ending the global tuberculosis epidemic by 2035 and has developed the End TB strategy to achieve this.