Abstract
Tuberculosis (TB) is a preventable and curable disease. Republic of Korea has designated TB as a second-class legal infectious disease and has managed patients with TB in the national TB surveillance system. According to Statistics Korea’s cause-of-death statistics for October 2024, the number of TB deaths in 2023 was 1,331 (2.6 people per 100,000 population), an increase of 0.7% (n=9) from the previous year (n=1,322, 2.6 people per 100,000 population). The decline in the number of TB deaths appears to have plateaued in 2023, with a slight increase of 0.7% compared to the previous year. Since exceeding 80.0% in 2016, the proportion of total TB deaths among adults aged 65 years and older has accounted for 87.2%. Therefore, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency continues to promote prevention and screening projects for adults aged 65 years and older, and we are implementing a customized TB management project so that patients with TB are managed with medication during the entire TB treatment period from June 2024. We plan to continue to promote strengthened TB policies across the entire TB control cycle (prevention–diagnosis–treatment) to improve the treatment success rate for patients with TB, reduce mortality due to TB, and further accelerate eradication of the disease.