To the Editor: The growing problem of tuberculosis in resource-rich countries has been recently highlighted,1 with immigration thought to be an important contributor. To assess a possible increase in incidence, we performed a retrospective case record review of all children who had tuberculin skin tests or who were diagnosed with tuberculosis at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead for 3 years from 2004 to 2006. This period included the establishment of a refugee clinic in May 2005, which routinely tests refugees by tuberculin skin testing. We compared our findings with published data from 1982 to 1991.2
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- 1 Department of Respiratory Medicine, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, NSW.
- 2 Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, NSW.
- 3 National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, NSW.
Correspondence: paulr3@chw.edu.au
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- 2. McIntosh ED, Isaacs D, Oates RK, et al. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis in children. Med J Aust 1993; 158: 735-740.
- 3. Balasegaram S, Watson JM, Rose AM, et al. A decade of change: tuberculosis in England and Wales 1988–98. Arch Dis Child 2003; 88: 772-777.
- 4. Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Settler arrivals 1996–97 to 2006–07. Australia, states and territories. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2007. http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/statistics/settler-arrivals/settler-arrivals-0607.pdf (accessed Nov 2007).
- 5. Smieja MJ, Marchetti CA, Cook DJ, Smaill FM. Isoniazid for preventing tuberculosis in non-HIV infected persons. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2000; (2): CD001363.
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