The Impact of Tuberculosis among Immigrants: Epidemiology and Strategies of Control in High-Income Countries--Current Data and Literature Review

Carlo Contini, Martina Maritati, Marachiara di Nuzzo, Lorenzo Massoli, Sara Lomenzo and Anastasio Grilli

A chapter in People's Movements in the 21st Century - Risks, Challenges and Benefits from IntechOpen

Abstract: A significant reappearance of tuberculosis (TB) was observed in industrialized countries during the last two decades. This is due to the spread of HIV infection itself and to today's migratory phenomenon as a consequence of wealth disparity, poverty, wars and political persecutions. This proportion is expected to increase and represents an important cause of the overall resurgence of the TB epidemic and drug-resistant TB in Western Europe and the USA. TB is currently one of the leading causes of death worldwide and a health problem in high-income countries. Although WHO global TB report 2015 with its "STOP TB" strategy has the goal to eliminate TB as a public health problem by 2050, TB shows no signs of disappearing despite some decline in high-income countries. In order to intensify the fights against this deadly disease, further efforts should be aimed to improve examination/detection processes to accurately determine all kinds of TB, and how best to enhance TB control through a coordinated medical screening program of migrants for active TB. Migration in itself is not a definitive risk for TB. Stressful living condition, social isolation, poverty, political fear/persecution, and difficulties to access to health care can expose these individuals to the risk of TB infection during and after the migration process. This chapter aims to discuss and highlight all these issues.

Keywords: tuberculosis (TB); latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI); migrants; documented migrants; undocumented migrants; asylum seekers; refugees; Europe (EU) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/53574 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:110840

DOI: 10.5772/66823

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().