Japan's rapidly aging population behind increase of TB cases.

Japan Weekly Monitor, February, 2002

OSAKA, Feb. 19 Kyodo

Tuberculosis (TB) is on the rise again in Japan and other developed areas in East Asia, largely due to the countries' rapidly aging population and migration, experts told a conference on the disease in Osaka on Tuesday.

In Japan, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore, about half of all TB victims are aged 50 and over, said the officials of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The number of TB cases in Japan declined throughout the 1960s, thanks to economic development and improved measures to treat the disease. During the previous decade, TB had become the ''national disease,'' with around half a million new cases reported each year.

But now the number is again on the rise, due to the vulnerability of elderly...