Background: Notified tuberculosis (TB) cases in Korea have not decreased over the last decade (2001-2010).
Methods: To clarify the reasons, we analyzed an annual report on notified tuberculosis patients and age-specific population drift in Korea.
Results: Compared to the age-specific notified TB cases between 2001 and 2010, distinctive features in notified TB cases and new cases increased markedly in people aged 45-54 years and in patients over 65 years old, whereas those between 15-34 years in 2010 decreased drastically. In particular, notified TB individuals over 65 years old occupied 29.6% of the cases in 2010, which was 1.5 times higher than that in 2001. The main reason not to decrease in notified TB patients for the last decade (2001-2010) was due to the increasing elderly population as well as the aging of baby boomers, which have a higher risk of TB development.
Conclusion: Korea needs to pay attention to the older population in order to successfully decrease the burden of TB in the future.
Keywords: Aging; Population Dynamics; Tuberculosis.