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Tuberculosis, which was thought to have been conquered by the early 1980s, has made a resurgence in the UK, especially in London, where Victorian living conditions are common among some groups.
The rates of tuberculosis are rising in Britain, according to an article published Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet, while the disease's occurrences in other western European countries are dropping.
The problem is becoming particularly acute in London, where 40 percent of all of the UK's TB cases have been reported. Four in ten cases are reported in the capital, with the number of cases rising by nearly 50 percent since 1999.
"It's prevailing today in certain sections of the community that replicate conditions in Victorian London," TB expert Alimuddin Zumla of University College London told Deutsche Welle. "Most of the TB occurs in areas where there's deprivation and poverty, and that's where all the homeless are.
So we've set up an endemic cycle of transmission."
In all European countries, tuberculosis is largely concentrated in high-risk groups, such as migrants, refugees, homeless people, drug users, prisoners and HIV-infected people. It is caused by a bacterial infection, usually of the lungs. Tuberculosis, which was thought to have been conquered by the early 1980s, has made a resurgence in the UK, especially in London, where Victorian living conditions are common among some groups.
The rates of tuberculosis are rising in Britain, according to an article published Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet, while the disease's occurrences in other western European countries are dropping.
The problem is becoming particularly acute in London, where 40 percent of all of the UK's TB cases have been reported. Four in ten cases are reported in the capital, with the number of cases rising by nearly 50 percent since 1999.
"It's prevailing today in certain sections of the community that replicate conditions in Victorian London," TB expert Alimuddin Zumla of University College London told Deutsche Welle. "Most of the TB occurs in areas where there's deprivation and poverty, and that's where all the homeless are. So we've set up an endemic cycle of transmission."
In all European countries, tuberculosis is largely concentrated in high-risk groups, such as migrants, refugees, homeless people, drug users, prisoners and HIV-infected people. It is caused by a bacterial infection, usually of the lungs.
The increase in the number of TB cases in the UK has largely been among immigrant groups, although most were not new migrants. Among the cases of those born overseas, 85 percent had lived in the UK for two or more years and about half had lived in the country for five or more years.
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