Prevalence of Tuberculosis in Mediterranean Port City Tobruk, Libya: A Retrospective Study

High prevalence and high rate of transmission of infection is the characteristic feature of the tuberculosis (TB). The pre and post revolution situation of Tobruk in Libya has been closely studied in the National Center for TB & Chest Diseases. We have presented here identified TB cases of about 40 years since 1974 till 2014 based on extensive smear/ culture positive examination of the samples. The study included 995 cases out of that 60.4 % male and 39.6 % female cases. The majority of cases 582 (85.6 %) were Libyans and 14.4 % non-Libyan nationalities, where Egyptian were, 46 (4.6 %), Sudanese 15 (1.5 %), and small percentages were from other nationalities. The trend of tuberculosis infection had been found to be statistically very uneven during four decades among different types of patients group such as male, female, young, old and with different occupations and nationalities. The highest infection was recorded in 1976 (total cases 64) and lowest in 1999 (total cases 5). The cases increased gradually and found to vary between 7 to 33 cases almost every year. The identified 390 cases (39.2 %) were Pulmonary TB cases and the remaining 605 cases (60.8 %) were extra-pulmonary TB cases. Nearly half of the TB cases (49.7 %) were among the age group 15 to 34 years. The highest number of cases was from Tobruk city 859 cases (86.3 %), followed by Emsaed city on the Libyan Egyptian border 44 cases (4.4 %). Thus we reported here that Tobruk is the middle burden city for tuberculosis within Libya.