摘要：Since the inception of the National Mycobacterial Surveillance System (NMSS) in 1991, annual crude notificationrates for tuberculosis have remained stable at between 5 and 6 per 100,000 population. In 1998, there was a total of923 TB notifications in Australia of which 884 were new TB cases, and 39 relapsed cases. The corresponding annualcrude notification rate for new and relapsed TB was 4.72 and 0.21 per 100,000 respectively. Seventy-seven percentof notifications that had a country of birth reported were overseas born. In keeping with trends observed overrecent reporting years, the populations for which notified TB rates are highest include the overseas born from highprevalence countries and Indigenous Australians. The lowest rates of disease have continued to be reported in thenon-Indigenous, Australian born population. Surveillance reports over the last seven years indicate that the rate ofdisease in this population is gradually declining
