Highest statistics for tuberculosis in East and South of Ukraine

The number of people suffering from tuberculosis in Ukraine is falling, however around 86% of those afflicted are people of working and child-bearing age. There are 84 thousand people with an active and contagious form of tuberculosis, with the main regions affected between the Luhansk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.

According to official statistics, last year 31,807 Ukrainians contracted the disease, this being 7% less than the previous year, and 12% less than the worst year – 2005.  The number of cases among adolescents has also fallen and stabilized, with 534 young people aged between 15 and 17 contracting the disease in 2009.  Over the last 10 years, the number of people catching tuberculosis in penal institutions and detention centres has fallen by 4.7 times. 7,676 people died of tuberculosis in 2009.

At the same time, the figures for contracting tuberculosis / HIV in Ukraine are rising. Whereas in 2008 the ratio for this combination was 5 per 100 thousand head of population, in 2009 the level had reached 8.8 cases. Tuberculosis also remains the main cause of death of people with AIDS. In 2009 1,979 people who were HIV positive died of tuberculosis, this being 76.4% of all AIDS-related deaths.

In 2009 580 medical workers contracted tuberculosis: 42.7% nurses and laboratory assistants, 41.5% - junior medical personnel and 15.8% - doctors.

The Ministry of Health do not have statistics for the number of tuberculosis patients who have died of the disease. They do, however, state that the figures for tuberculosis, spread of the disease and mortality among Ukraine’s population are lower than in Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, but higher than in Belarus and Moldova.

In 2009 WHO identified 27 countries with 85% of all cases of multiple drug resistant tuberculosis. The first five places on this list were held by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Ukraine, with a population as of 1 January 2009 of 46,143 million, had 11% of all registered cases of tuberculosis in the European region.

The tuberculosis epidemic was declared in Ukraine in 1995, and reached its peak in 2005.