Tuberculosis: 60 years of systematic application of the vaccine Bacille Calmette Guerin in Serbia

Abstract

Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is one of the most widely used vaccines in the world and is currently given to children at birth or soon after birth in over 100 countries, including Serbia, to minimize the risk of developing serious forms of tuberculosis (TB). Despite different data about its efficacy, it is evident that BCG protects infants from disseminated and meningeal TB (there is a decreasing trend of such cases over the past six decades in Serbia) and TB - related death. Serbia is an intermediate-to-low TB incidence country in socio-economic transition. Its current epidemiologic situation when it comes to TB shows a slightly decreasing overall trend of TB, a constant decreasing time trend of childhood TB as well as a dramatically increasing trend of TB in the elderly. Some forms of extra - pulmonary TB are on the increase as well. At the beginning of the 21st century, BCG is a useful resource for individual protection in particular situations where the spread of TB infection and disease and the limited application of preventive measures cannot provide an objective control of TB.