High Incidence of Active Tuberculosis in Asylum Seekers from Eritrea and Somalia in the First 5 Years after Arrival in the Netherlands

Abstract

Three quarters of tuberculosis (TB) patients in the Netherlands are foreign-born; 26% are from Eritrea or Somalia. We analyzed TB incidence rates in asylum seekers from Eritrea and Somalia in the first 5 years after arrival in the Netherlands (2013–2017) and performed survival analysis with Cox proportional hazards regression to analyze the effect of age and sex on the risk for TB. TB incidence remained high 5 years after arrival in asylum seekers from Eritrea (309 cases/100,000 person-years) and Somalia (81 cases/100,000 person-years). Age >18 years was associated with a higher risk for TB in asylum seekers from Eritrea (3.4 times higher) and Somalia (3.7 times higher), and male sex was associated with a 1.6 times higher risk for TB in asylum seekers from Eritrea. Screening and treating asylum seekers from high-incidence areas for latent TB infection upon arrival would further reduce TB incidence in the Netherlands.

Keywords

• tuberculosis and other mycobacteria
• TB
• incidence
• asylum seekers
• Eritrea
• Somalia