Current Status of Tuberculosis in Korea / 대한내과학회지

ABSTRACT

Tuberculosis is still a serious communicable disease in Korea. The prevalence of tuberculosis had been rapidly decreased in past by the country widely expanded national control program, improvement of nutrition and development of medical services. However, decline of tuberculosis is recently stagnated because of increase of aged population and the prevalence of other chronic disease such as diabetes. The registry number of new tuberculosis patients was 36,305 and 2,365 cases were died of tuberculosis in 2010. Proportion of retreatment cases which is caused by the improper patient care is much higher than other countries. Public-private collaboration system to improve management of tuberculosis patients treating from the private sector has been recently implemented. However, directly observed treatment which is known as an international standard of patient care and adopted by the most of the countries have to be implemented to accelerate the decline of tuberculosis morbidity and improve patient care.