23-01-2018
A report by the Polish Humanitarian Team shows that the risk of contracting tuberculosis in Ukraine is six times higher than in Poland. The head of the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate Marek Posobkiewicz, however, is reassuring and stresses that the infectious disease tuberculosis is spreading mainly among unvaccinated people.
According to the World Health Organisation, there are fewer and fewer cases of tuberculosis in Europe, but 18 countries in our region still have a high incidence rate (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan).
Approximately 900 new cases of TB occur every day in these countries.
Compulsory vaccination against TB and other infectious diseases in European Union countries has had an impact on the reduction of cases in the region.
In Poland, despite compulsory vaccination, seven thousand cases of tuberculosis are detected each year. The problem is that more and more people are refusing compulsory vaccination. In the first half of 2017, there were more than 23,000. This is 10 per cent more than in the whole of 2016. Many of these were refusals to be vaccinated specifically against TB.
The head of the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate stresses that campaigns are being run to make the public aware of how dangerous the disease is.
