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Social Science & Medicine 68 (2009) 2240–2246

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Social Science & Medicine


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed

Drivers of tuberculosis epidemics: The role of risk factors and social determinants
Knut Lönnroth*, Ernesto Jaramillo, Brian G. Williams, Christopher Dye, Mario Raviglione
World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The main thrust of the World Health Organization’s global tuberculosis (TB) control strategy is to ensure
Available online 23 April 2009 effective and equitable delivery of quality assured diagnosis and treatment of TB. Options for including
preventive efforts have not yet been fully considered. This paper presents a narrative review of the
Keywords: historical and recent progress in TB control and the role of TB risk factors and social determinants. The
Tuberculosis review was conducted with a view to assess the prospects of effectively controlling TB under the current
Disease control
strategy, and the potential to increase epidemiological impact through additional preventive interven-
Social determinants
Risk factors
tions. The review suggests that, while the current strategy is effective in curing patients and saving lives,
Review the epidemiological impact has so far been less than predicted. In order to reach long-term epidemio-
Epidemiology logical targets for global TB control, additional interventions to reduce peoples’ vulnerability for TB may
WHO therefore be required. Risk factors that seem to be of importance at the population level include poor
living and working conditions associated with high risk of TB transmission, and factors that impair the
host’s defence against TB infection and disease, such as HIV infection, malnutrition, smoking, diabetes,
alcohol abuse, and indoor air pollution. Preventive interventions may target these factors directly or via
their underlying social determinants. The identification of risk groups also helps to target strategies for
early detection of people in need of TB treatment. More research is needed on the suitability, feasibility
and cost-effectiveness of these intervention options.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction frameworks alive (Amrith, 2002; Rosen, 1974). Several countries


have tried consistently to pursue social policies aimed to promote
The Commission on Social Determinants for Health (CSDH), set equity in health, some with a great deal of success (CSDH, 2008).
up by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005, has However, in most countries, little of the social model of health
attempted to revitalize the debate and actions to improve health advocated by WHO and others was translated into practice. As
through addressing the ‘‘causes of the causes’’ of ill health. The a consequence, much preventable ill health and health inequity
commission has developed action frameworks in several fields to prevails today (CSDH, 2008).
address the social determinants of health including early childhood The last 2–3 decades have seen reinvigorated attempts to fight
development, globalization, urbanisation, employment conditions, diseases with medical technologies alone. Key concepts in today’s
social exclusion, etc. A key message from the CSDH is that public discourse on disease control include: evidence-based medicine;
health achievements will largely depend on actions outside the health systems strengthening; and community involvement. The
health care sector (CSDH, 2008). latter two focuses mainly on the capacity to deliver medical tech-
The work of the commission builds on a long social medicine nologies effectively. Meanwhile, social medicine has often been
tradition, from Virchow and the public health oriented social and reduced to actions to identify risk groups that need to be targeted
environmental interventions that he and others inspired from the with medical interventions and attempts to influence individuals’
mid-19th century onwards (Rosen, 1974), through the social model risk behaviour (Porter, 2006).
of health adopted by WHO in the late 1940s (Chisholm, 1948), to the The current global tuberculosis (TB) control paradigm mainly
Health for All concept in the 1970s (WHO, 1978). It has not always focuses on cutting transmission through early case detection and
been easy to keep the social medicine concepts and action effective treatment. Medical interventions are at the core of the
global strategy (Lönnroth & Raviglione, 2008; WHO, 2006).
However, historically, TB has been used as a prime example of
* Corresponding author. World Health Organization, Stop TB Department, 20
Avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland. Tel.: þ41 22 7911628, fax: þ41 22
a ‘‘social disease’’, the control of which requires social, economic
7914199. and environmental interventions. Furthermore, the need to control
E-mail address: lonnrothk@who.int (K. Lönnroth). TB has often been used as an argument for improving living

0277-9536/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.03.041
K. Lönnroth et al. / Social Science & Medicine 68 (2009) 2240–2246 2241

conditions and reduce inequity (Chisholm, 1948; Rosen, 1974). After increased population density and crowded living conditions, while
the second World War, a medically oriented TB control model poor nutritional status and other risk factors increased the risk of
emerged (Amrith, 2002). Much hope was initially placed on mass break-down from infection to active disease in vulnerable groups,
vaccination with BCG (Brimnes, 2007), hopes which were later such as among the urban poor (Aparicio, Capurro, & Castillo-
shattered when it was demonstrated that the protective effect and Chavez, 2002; Grundy, 2005; Rieder, 1999; Shimao, 2005). At the
epidemiological impact were limited (Rieder, 1999). When effective peak of the epidemic in Europe TB death rates were close to 1% per
chemotherapy for TB became available in the end of the 1940 and year in some urban areas, several times higher than the current
beginning of 1950s, the control model switched to an almost rates in countries with high HIV prevalence (Fig. 1).
completely curative focus. ‘‘Prevention starts with cure’’ became Throughout the 20th century, even before the introduction of
a slogan for the global role out of effective treatments. It was pre- effective chemotherapy, TB incidence declined steadily in most
dicted that good coverage of effective treatment would result in industrialized countries although it did increase temporarily during
a rapid decline in TB incidence (Styblo & Bumgarner, 1991). the two World Wars (Fig. 2). This was a period of economic growth,
However, some recent observations have indicated that the impact social reform, poverty reduction and improved living conditions as
of the present TB control strategy has been less than expected well as important advances in medicine and public health. The
(WHO, 2008a). If these observations are confirmed, there may be relative importance of the factors that may have contributed to the
a need to again broaden the strategy to include more preventive decline in TB in the 20th century is still a matter of debate.
efforts (Farmer, 1997; Jaramillo, 1999). One avenue for improved TB McKeown and Record (1962) suggested that before the 1950s the
prevention is the ongoing quest for better TB vaccines and better decline was due to improved nutritional status and to some extent
chemotherapy for preventive treatment. Another avenue leads improved living conditions, while medical and public health
through actions to address the social determinants of TB, as well as interventions had only a marginal impact before chemotherapy
the more proximate risk factors (the physical and biomedical became available. Others have convincingly argued that the intro-
factors that directly influence the mechanisms that govern expo- duction of sanatoria and other mechanisms to isolate infectious
sure to tuberculosis, risk of acquiring tuberculosis infection, and cases as well as pasteurization of milk also had a significant impact
risk of progression from tuberculosis infection to active tubercu- on trends in the incidence of TB (Fairchild & Oppenheimer, 1998;
losis disease). Grundy, 2005; Lienhardt, 2001; Wilson, 2005). Natural selection
In order to assess the relevance and potential benefits of the may also have played a role (Davies, Tocque, Bellis, Rimmington, &
latter, a review was conducted to identify key social determinants Davies, 1999).
of TB and the possible causal pathways through which they operate. The discovery of the TB bacillus in 1882 was an outstanding
We also reviewed the historical and recent progress in global TB advance in the understanding of transmissible diseases, and
control with a view to assess the prospects of effectively controlling marked the beginning of the germ theory era. As a result of this
TB in the future with the current global strategy, and the potential discovery, a TB control paradigm based mostly on the biological
to increase epidemiological impact through adding actions on understanding of the disease gradually emerged. It received a final
social determinants and risk factors. boost with the discovery in the 1940s and 1950s of drugs that could
cure the disease (Amrith, 2002). The expanded pharmacopeia of
Methods anti-TB drugs in the 1950s and 1960s helped to sustain and perhaps
accelerate the decline in TB incidence (Fig. 2). But this was not only
A literature review was undertaken to identify historic and a period of rapid medical and health care advances. It was also
recent trends in TB burden; social determinants of TB; and the most a time of both rapid economic growth and accelerated welfare
important proximate TB risk factors. We searched PubMed, the reforms in many industrialized countries (Navarro et al., 2006).
send-list ‘‘TB-Related News and Journal Items Weekly Update’’ Progress in TB control in the industrialized countries over the past
(Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, USA), and centuries was thus brought about by advances on several fronts at
a private data-base on tuberculosis publications from the past 40 the same time – medical, public health, economic and social.
years (created by Dr Hans Rieder). The analysis was carried out by
the Stop TB Department at WHO, in collaboration with other rele- The evolution of the WHO’s TB control strategy
vant WHO Departments, including those responsible for tobacco
control, nutrition, alcohol and substance abuse, environmental After decades of TB control neglect, with sustained high TB
health, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. The Priority Public Health Condition burden in many low- and middle income countries and a resur-
Knowledge Network of the CSDH provided technical support and gence of TB in several high-income countries in the 1980s, global
feedback.

Findings

History of TB epidemiology and social change in industrialized


countries

Epidemiological TB data before the 20th century is imprecise.


However, some broad trends have been identified with a reason-
able level of certainty. The conventional wisdom is that the inci-
dence of TB increased in industrialized countries in the 17th to 18th
centuries, peaking at different times in different places from the
middle of the 1700s in Great Britain to the beginning of the 1900s in
Japan. From these trends, a temporal association has been sug-
gested between increased TB incidence and rapid industrialization
and urbanisation. TB rates were often particularly high in urban Fig. 1. Modelled tuberculosis deaths rates or selected European cities 1750–1950
areas. A plausible explanation is that transmission increased due to (source: Rieder, 1999).
2242 K. Lönnroth et al. / Social Science & Medicine 68 (2009) 2240–2246

2000 rely on reducing vulnerability to TB infection and disease. While it


does not suggest that preventive approaches are un-important it
does suggest a way forward that is independent of them.
First anti-TB Since the vast majority of people with TB are from the poorer
1500
Deaths/million/year

drug available
segments of society, the global TB control targets cannot be met
unless these poor segments are reached with quality health
services (WHO, 2005). Early diagnosis and treatment are also
1000
important to reduce adverse social and financial consequences of
the disease for TB patients and their families (Dye & Floyd, 2006;
Hanson, Floyd, & Weil, 2006). Consequently, no influential policy
500
document on TB control fails to highlight that it is essential to
device strategies that ensure good access to quality TB diagnosis
World War 1 World War 2 and treatment for the entire population, especially the most
0 vulnerable groups (Stop TB Partnership, 2006; WHO, 1994, 2002,
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2005, 2006).
Fig. 2. Decline in TB mortality in England and Wales, and its association in time with
In summary, the Stop TB Strategy aims to control TB mainly by
the two World Wars, and the introduction of chemotherapy against TB. cutting the transmission chain, and this should be achieved by early
and effective treatment of all people with TB. The strategy
acknowledges that various social factors put certain vulnerable
efforts to control TB were reinvigorated in 1991, when a World groups at high risk of developing TB and makes recommendations
Health Assembly resolution recognized TB as a major global public on ways to provide these groups with effective TB treatment.
health problem (WHO, 1991). The ‘‘DOTS’’ strategy was developed However, it does not explicitly address the underlying factors that
by WHO and partners as a response in the 1990s (Raviglione & Pio, make these groups more vulnerable to TB in the first place.
2002). Realizing that essential medical technologies for appropriate
diagnosis and treatment were not used optimally in most parts of Epidemiological impact of DOTS
the world, the response was to devise a strategy that takes into
account the basic health care elements required to effectively Successful DOTS implementation was associated with a decline
deliver those technologies. After a decade of DOTS implementation, in TB incidence and prevalence in Peru, Cuba, China, parts of India,
the new ‘‘Stop TB Strategy’’ was launched in 2006 in response to and the USA (China TB Control Collaboration, 2004; Frieden, Fuji-
a number of challenges that had not been sufficiently tackled wara, Washko, & Hamburg, 1995; Gonzalez, Armas, & Llanes, 2007;
through DOTS, notably the challenges of multi-drug resistant Suarez et al., 2001; Subramani et al., 2006). In some other countries
(MDR) TB and the intersecting epidemics of TB and HIV, as well as in Latin America, including Chile and Uruguay, TB declined rapidly
the challenges of weak health systems, insufficient engagement of from the 1960s to the 1980s, which coincided with implementation
private providers and communities, and reliance on imperfect of TB programmes that had the basic DOTS elements in place
medical technologies (Raviglione & Uplekar, 2006; WHO, 2006). (Rodriguez De Marco, Sanches, & Alvarez Goya, 2007; Zuniga &
The medium-term goal of global TB control is to halve TB Rojas, 2002). However, where there has been a demonstrable
prevalence and death rates by 2015 as compared to 1990 levels, and decline in incidence it has been difficult to separate out the effects
to achieve a decline in incidence, as established in Millennium of DOTS from those of social and economic development.
Development Goal (MDG) 6 (Stop TB Partnership, 2006; WHO, Recent country-level investigations of the impact of DOTS pro-
2006). A longer-term target is to ‘eliminate’ TB by reducing the grammes have shown that, after several years of apparent
incidence to less than 1 new case per million population per year by successful implementation (as measured by high case detection
2050. Mathematical models suggest that the medium-term goal and treatment success), incidence is not falling as rapidly as was
could be met by detecting 70% or more of all incident cases of expected. Vietnam appears to have reached the targets for case
infectious TB and curing at least 85% of them (Borgdorff, Floyd, & detection and treatment success since 1997, but the case notifica-
Broekmans, 2002; Dye, Garnett, Sleeman, & Williams, 1998; Styblo tion rate has remained approximately constant over the last decade
& Bumgarner, 1991; Suarez et al., 2001) and these are the targets (Huong et al., 2006). The explanation for this is unclear. However,
against which the performance of National TB Programmes (NTP) a recent study showed that a decrease in notification rates among
are conventionally measured (WHO, 2008a). older people has been offset by an increase among young people,
The first priority for NTPs is thus to cure patients with active especially young men in urban areas and remote rural areas (Vree
disease so as to cut transmission, reduce suffering, avert mortality, et al., 2007). It is possible that internal migration and/or higher
and avoid creation of drug resistance. It has been demonstrated exposure to various risk factors for TB infection and disease in these
that TB treatment according to the DOTS principles is a highly young men has balanced out the impact of the control programme.
cost-effective public health intervention with regards to disability- In Morocco also, the reduction in notification rates has been less
adjusted life years saved (Dye & Floyd, 2006). Furthermore, cost– than expected considering the successful implementation of the
benefit calculations show that curative TB control is a good societal DOTS programme for many years. Here too the problem seems to
investment (Laxminarayan et al., 2007). be related to increasing rates of TB among young men in urban
The focus of the strategy is thus on diagnosis and curative areas (Dye, Ottmani, Laasri, & Benchelkh, 2007). Similar patterns
treatment rather than on TB prevention sensu lato. The few are also seen in the routine surveillance data from Sri Lanka and
preventive aspects of the strategy – isoniazid preventive therapy Myanmar (WHO, 2007). Several States of India have been
for selected risk groups and BCG vaccination – are biomedical successfully implementing DOTS since 1998 but there has been no
interventions. The mathematical model underpinning the current detectable decline in case notification rates (Watt, Hosseini, Lönn-
approach does not make explicit assumptions about other risk roth, Williams, & Dye, 2008). These observations raise the possi-
factors that may drive the TB epidemic, apart from HIV which has bility that the impact of improved diagnostic and treatment
been included in some of the modelling exercises (Dye et al., 1998; services is offset by maintained or increased vulnerability to TB
Stop TB Partnership, 2006). Implicitly, the current strategy does not infection and disease among certain subgroups of the population.
K. Lönnroth et al. / Social Science & Medicine 68 (2009) 2240–2246 2243

The slower-than-expected rate of decline might also be because curative services, which would reduce transmission of TB.
many people with TB are diagnosed so late that they have already However, it is unlikely to be sustainable without additional efforts
infected many people before effective treatment starts (Porter & to prevent progression from infection to disease. Currently, more
Grange, 1999; WHO/EMRO, 2006; WHO/WPRO, 2004). than 2 billion people are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
As transmission falls, a growing proportion of cases arise from the
The epidemiological challenge ahead: the role of prevention reactivation of latent infections, rather than from progression of
recent infections. A recent analysis of the reasons for slow decline
The uncertainty about the impact of DOTS on the burden of TB is in TB incidence in Hong Kong, despite good TB diagnosis and
reinforced by a recent analysis of predictors of TB case notification treatment services for several decades, suggests that high preva-
trends between 1997 and 2006 (Dye, Lönnroth, Jaramillo, Williams, lence of TB infection among elderly combined with very high risk of
& Raviglione, in press). This analysis suggests that the variation in reactivating contributes to a sustained high incidence (Vynnycky,
TB trends is more strongly associated with biological, social and Borgdorff, Leung, Tam, & Fine, 2008).
economic factors than with NTP performance. Moreover, recent In summary, to achieve the long-term targets for TB control,
calculations suggest that, although prevalence and death rates are efforts to cut transmission need to be complemented with inter-
falling globally, the rate of decline is not fast enough to meet the ventions that reduce progression to active TB disease. Such inter-
MDG related targets to halve TB prevalence and death rates by 2015 ventions may include better preventive chemotherapy, a new
compared to 1990 levels (WHO, 2009). The biggest challenges in vaccine that prevents progression from infection to disease, as well
cutting TB burden are in sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe. as interventions that reduce exposure to various social, environ-
The countries of sub-Saharan Africa and in Eastern Europe and the mental and biological risk factors for TB.
former Soviet Union showed striking increases in TB burden during
the 1990s, for somewhat different reasons: in Eastern Europe and Proximate risk factors and upstream determinants
former Soviet Union countries, the resurgence of TB (after decades
of steady decline before the 1990s) can be explained by economic The socio-economic gradient
decline and the failure of TB control and other health services since The TB burden follows a strong socio-economic gradient
1991, along with other factors such as social deprivation, poor living between countries, within countries, and within communities, and
conditions, alcoholism, and the mixing of prison and civilian pop- the poorest have the highest risk (D’Arcy Hart, 1934; Hanson et al.,
ulations (Leon et al., 1997; Pesut, Gledovic, Grgurevic, Nagorni- 2006; Harling, Ehrlich, & Myer, 2008; Hinman, Judd, Kolnik, &
Obradovic, & Adzic, 2008). In Africa the increase was largely due to Daitch, 1976; Holtgrave & Crosby, 2004; Lopez De Fede, Stewart,
the rapid spread of HIV in the 1980s and 1990s (Corbett et al., Harris, & Mayfield-Smith, 2008; Muniyandi et al., 2007; Van Rie
2003). Reducing the burden of TB in these two regions will depend et al., 1999). Studies assessing the burden of TB in specific vulner-
to a great extent on dealing with the factors that drove the burden able populations such as prisoners, the homeless, and certain
of TB up so rapidly in the 1990s (WHO, 2008a). ethnic minorities also show that there is a strong association
In 2006–2007, the decline in global TB incidence was estimated between social deprivation and TB risk (Bobrik, Danishevski, Ero-
at less than 1% per year (WHO, 2009). To eliminate TB by 2050 the shina, & McKee, 2005; Buskin, Gale, Weiss, & Nolan, 1994; Fried-
incidence rate must fall by an average of 16% annually over the next man, Williams, Singh, & Frieden, 1996; Keppel, 2007; Mori,
40 years (Fig. 3). Recent modelling suggests that even if the Global Leonardson, & Welty, 1992; Rieder, 1999). However, the causal
Plan to Stop TB is successfully implemented and results in the pathways linking poverty and low socio-economic status to
expected rate of reduction in incidence of about 6%, the global increased risk of TB are not fully understood.
incidence rate in 2050 would still be of the order of 100 per million
population, i.e. about 100 times greater than the elimination target Proximate risk factors
(Watt et al., 2008). An incidence decline of >15% per year might be Proximate risk factors include those that directly increase
achieved temporarily through massive efforts to scale up of exposure to infectious droplets. A necessary risk factor for TB
infection is contact with a person with active disease. The likeli-
hood of having such a contact is determined by the underlying
10000 disease burden in the community. People living or working in
environments where TB prevalence is particularly high are obvi-
ously at high risk of infection, for example prison staff and inmates
(Bobrik et al., 2005) and certain health care workers (Menzies,
Incidence/1 million/yr

1000
Joshi, & Pai, 2007). The risk of exposure is also determined by the
physical environment in which the contact takes place, including
aspects of crowding, air flow and humidity (Rieder, 1999).
100 Proximate risk factors also include those that impair the host
defence against infection and break-down to disease, such as HIV
infection (Corbett et al., 2003), malnutrition (Cegielski & McMurray,
2004), tobacco smoke (Lin, Ezzat, & Murray, 2007, Slama et al.,
10
Elimination -16%/yr 2007), indoor air pollution caused by burning of solid fuels (Lin
Global Plan -6%/yr et al., 2007; Rhefuess, 2006), alcohol abuse (Lönnroth, Williams,
Current trajectory -1%/yr Stadlin, Jaramillo, & Dye, 2008), silicosis (Corbett et al., 2000;
1 Rieder, 1999), diabetes (Stevenson et al., 2007), malignancies,
2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 a wide range of chronic systemic illnesses, and immunosuppressive
Year treatment (Rieder, 1999). There is some evidence that outdoor air
pollution is a risk factor for TB (Cohen & Mehta, 2007; Tremblay,
Fig. 3. Scenarios for the trend of global TB incidence 2007–2050, based on: (a)
extrapolation of current rate of decline (1% per year); (b) predicted decline with full
2007). Depression and stress can have negative effect on the cell-
implementation of the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006–2015 (6% per year); and (c) mediated immune system and could therefore in theory increase
desired trend for reaching the TB elimination target by 2050 (16% per year). the risk of TB (Prince et al., 2007).
2244 K. Lönnroth et al. / Social Science & Medicine 68 (2009) 2240–2246

In an analysis applied to the 22 High TB Burden Countries (HBC, health system (Kjellström et al., 2007). TB incidence is generally
countries that together suffer 80% of the estimated global TB burden), higher in urban than in rural areas (Lönnroth, Zignol, & Uplekar, 2006),
the population attributable fraction (PAF) for selected TB risk factors and, as discussed above, there are signs that urban TB control is
for impaired host defence was roughly estimated (Lönnroth & particularly challenging (Dye et al., 2007; Watt et al., 2008; WHO,
Raviglione, 2008). This analysis, which was recently updated based 2007). The tendencies for the burden of TB to be higher in urban than
on new estimates, suggests that malnutrition (PAF, 27%), smoking in rural areas may be due to high population density, crowded living
(23%), HIV (19%), diabetes (6%), harmful alcohol use (13%) and indoor and working conditions, as well as lifestyle changes associated with
air population (26%) are all important risk factors globally (though urban living. Exposure to certain TB risk factors such as smoking,
the evidence base for indoor air pollution is still weak). Their relative alcohol abuse, unsafe sex, and unhealthy diet, may increase when
importance depends on the prevalence of exposure and is therefore absolute poverty falls at the same time as rapid socio-cultural tran-
different for different countries and regions. For example, a region- sitions lead to changed health behaviour patterns (Kjellström et al.,
alized PAF analysis suggests, as expected, that HIV is a much more 2007). Such changes are partly the result of globalization (Raviglione,
important risk factor in the Africa (PAF, >50%) than elsewhere due to 2007). For example, globalization of nutrition makes food with high
the high prevalence of HIV. calorific value but a low nutritional value available at relatively cheap
prices (Labonté, Blouin, & Chopra, 2007). Changed nutritional patterns
Links between socio-economic status and proximate risk factors combined with less physical exercise due to poor urban planning and
It is reasonable to assume that the higher risk of TB among lack of health promoting policies can explain why diabetes can coexist
people in low socio-economic status (SES) groups is largely an effect with malnutrition in poor urban settings (Kjellström et al., 2007). HIV
of their greater exposure to some or all of the risk factors discussed prevalence is on average 1.7 times higher in urban than rural areas
above. A recent multi-level analysis of TB risk factors from South (UNAIDS & WHO, 2006), and this is linked to various social determi-
Africa found an association between the risk of TB and smoking, nants of unsafe sex. The potential increase in risk increase due to
alcohol and under-nutrition. These factors partly explained the clustering of these TB risk factors is often further augmented by
underlying association between low SES and TB risk, suggesting fragmented health care systems in urban areas, and poor health care
that these proximate risk factors are on the causal pathway between access among urban slum dwellers (Lönnroth et al., 2006).
poverty and TB risk (Harling et al., 2008). People from low SES
groups have on average: more frequent contact with people with Discussion
active TB disease; higher likelihood of crowded and poorly venti-
lated living and working conditions; limited access to safe cooking This review suggests that, in order to reach long-term TB control
facilities; more food insecurity; lower levels of awareness and/or targets, the current TB control strategy needs to be complemented
less power to act on existing knowledge concerning healthy with efforts to address TB risk factors and social determinants. Fig. 4
behaviour (e.g. safe sex, smoking, diet and alcohol use); and limited presents a framework for identifying entry points for such inter-
access to high quality health care (FAO, 2006; Gilson, Doherty, ventions. In principle, reducing the prevalence of the proximate risk
Loewenson, & Francis, 2007; Kjellström et al., 2007). factors will reduce TB incidence. This may be achieved by tackling
Malnutrition and indoor air pollution are direct markers of these risk factors directly, or the social determinants – on the
poverty (FAO, 2006; Rhefuess, 2006). Smoking prevalence is individual, community, national and international level – that lay
consistently higher among the lower SES groups than among behind them.
higher SES groups in all regions of the world and smoking preva- We know from the history of TB that general socio-economic
lence is increasing rapidly in low income countries, while it is development can contribute substantially to TB control by
decreasing in high-income countries (WHO, 2008b). For HIV, improving living and conditions, nutrition status, and health care
alcohol and diabetes, the picture is more complex. On average, HIV services. However, economic development may also be associated
prevalence is higher in poor countries than in rich countries and the with increased risk of TB, for example due to urbanisation and life-
prevalence is higher in countries with more unequal wealth style changes. The dynamics of the relationship between socio-
distribution. However, there is wide variation in national HIV economic development and TB epidemiology, and the causal path-
prevalence across countries with similar level of national wealth ways that link SES with risk of TB are not fully understood. Fig. 4 is
(Piot, Greener, & Russell, 2007; Reidpath, 2008). Furthermore, on an therefore indicative only, and may be used also as a framework for
individual level the association between SES and HIV prevalence is further research. The following areas of research require attention:
less clear (Humphrey, Nathoo, & Hargrove, 2007; Mishra et al.,
2007, Wojcicki, 2005). Prevalence of alcohol dependence is higher
in rich than in poor countries. However, within countries, at least
for men, harmful drinking patterns and alcohol related morbidity
and mortality follow a reversed socio-economic gradient: those
with low SES are at highest risk (Schmidt, Mäkelä, Rehm, & Room,
2008). The association between SES and diabetes is also complex.
Economic development, reduced poverty and improved food
security can lead to increased diabetes prevalence. The prevalence
is generally higher among the better off than among the worse off
in poor countries. However, in middle- and high-income countries
the reverse is true. Here, people from low SES groups have higher
prevalence, and this is probably linked to a less healthy diet and less
physical activity (Irwin & Whiting, 2008; Smith, 2007).

The role of urbanisation


Rapid urbanisation can create ideal conditions for TB epidemics to
flourish, unless accompanied by good urban planning, social reforms,
environmental protection, and a strong and well-coordinated urban Fig. 4. Framework for proximate risk factors and upstream determinants of TB.
K. Lönnroth et al. / Social Science & Medicine 68 (2009) 2240–2246 2245

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