Tuberculosis outbreak in East Greenland: groups at risk in an isolated arctic setting

In 2009, an unusually high number of tuberculosis (TB) cases were reported from a settlement (Settlement X) in East Greenland. 4years earlier, screening among schoolchildren had documented all children in this settlement to be free of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (MTI), whereas similar screenings had shown an MTI prevalence of 8% among schoolchildren in the rest of East Greenland [1]. The average TB incidence rate in East Greenland 5years prior to the outbreak was similar to 300 per 100000 populations (fig. 1) [2, 3].