Irish doctors have called for a range of public health measures to tackle a resurgence of tuberculosis (TB) after one national referral centre recorded a 74% increase in cases during a four-year period.<\/p>\n
A team of medics from the Department of Respiratory Medicine at St. James\u2019s Hospital in Dublin reported a 73.8% spike in TB presentations between 2021 and 2024, describing the trend as \u201cconcerning\u201d.<\/p>\n
They noted that TB has re-emerged as the leading global cause of death from a single infectious agent, overtaking HIV, malaria, and Covid-19; as progress on reducing mortality has \u201cslowed considerably\u201d.<\/p>\n
The doctors said elimination of TB in Ireland remains \u201cachievable\u201d but requires renewed policy commitment, resource allocation, and vigilance within clinical and public health systems.<\/p>\n
They called for strong contact-tracing, robust national surveillance, targeted screening of high-risk populations, ready access to rapid diagnostics, and comprehensive treatment-adherence programmes.<\/p>\n
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) has also noted climbing TB infections in recent years, with notifications rising from 224 in 2022 to 288 in 2024.<\/p>\n
Writing in the Irish Medical Journal, the team of doctors from St. James\u2019s Hospital said shifting global migration patterns are reflected in Ireland\u2019s TB demographics, with much higher incidence among those not born in the country.<\/p>\n
They said symptoms of the disease are becoming more diverse, with pulmonary TB \u2013 affecting the lungs \u2013 accounting for only 55%-65% of cases each year. The disease was detected in 20 distinct anatomical sites at the hospital between 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n
This changing epidemiology is being shaped by \u201cconvergence of global migration\u201d as well as post-pandemic healthcare disruptions, according to the medics, posing new diagnostic challenges.<\/p>\n
While Ireland remains a low-incidence country by European standards, stagnation in the reduction of cases is running counter to World Health Organisation (WHO) strategies for the elimination of the disease by 2030, they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs global migration and social complexity continue to influence disease patterns, TB control must remain an active national priority rather than a historical success story,\u201d the authors added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish doctors have called for a range of public health measures to tackle a resurgence of tuberculosis (TB)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,4892,396,2120,61,60],"class_list":["post-422021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-news","tag-healthcare","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}