TB cases increase 20% in four years, report warns

Tuberculosis - a potentially lethal disease that was nearly wiped out in New Zealand - is making a comeback.

And those who think they are protected by vaccinations given between the 1960s and the 1980s should think again. The vaccine has been found to be only 50 per cent effective.

Cases of the disease, once rampant in slum areas, have increased 20 per cent in the past four years, according to Environmental Science and Research's notifiable diseases surveillance report.

Hutt Valley Health medical officer of health Margot McLean said many people considered tuberculosis to be a disease that had long been eradicated from New Zealand but that was far from the case.

Last year ESR reported 419 cases.

It is the highest number since a prolonged outbreak in the North Island between 1996 and 1999 which pushed the number to a peak of 450. But the present increase was not due to a specific outbreak.

Dr McLean said the increase could not be attributed to any one factor but appeared to be part of a worldwide trend.

Many teenagers had received the vaccination during a national scheme targeted at secondary school students. Introduced to New Zealand in 1948, the vaccine was later extended to all adolescents.

The programme was phased out in the South Island in 1963 and in the North Island by 1990.

It was found to be only about 50 per cent effective in adults, Dr McLean said. It was now only used for infants in high-risk groups.

Overcrowding in places such as South Auckland had contributed to the growing number of cases, but residents of those areas were not the only ones at risk.

Those affected by the disease included people who had travelled or immigrated from high-risk areas such as Africa, Asia and South America, but many had never left New Zealand, she said.

In the first half of last year six deaths were attributed to the disease: two elderly women from central and south Auckland, a man in his 20s from Wellington, a woman in her 50s from Canterbury, a toddler from south Auckland and an elderly man from Wellington.

On the rise

* 2000: 354 cases

* 2003: 419 cases

- NZPA