Tuberculosis in migrants to Australia: Outcomes of a national screening program.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Few low-incidence countries are on track to achieve the ambitious target of reaching TB pre-elimination by 2035. Australia is a high-income country with a low burden of TB, which is particularly concentrated in migrant populations. As part of Australia's migration program, permanent, provisional and humanitarian visa applicants are screened for TB, along with some applicants for temporary visas.

Methods

We calculated the prevalence of all forms of active TB and bacteriologically-confirmed TB among onshore and offshore applicants for visas to Australia from July 2014 to June 2017, and investigated associated risk factors using logistic regression.

Findings

Visa applicants were predominantly young adults from various Asian countries. Among 2,381,217 applicant

SUBMITTER: Trauer JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8315463 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature