BCG Vaccine: Necessary or Not for North Cyprus

Abstract

The cross-sectional study was performed 2016 to 2020 in North Cyprus. A total of 288 patinets were studied with TB culture, Ziehl-Neelsen Staining, PCR and the QuantiFERON TB Gold Plus. SPSS was used for the statistical analysis. The number of patients who found as positive for any of the samples were 27 (9.4%). Considering the distribution over the years, it was seen that TB positive patients increased significantly between 2016 and 2020 (p=0.000). It is seen that the prevalence of TB among foreign nationals is higher than that of other nationals (p=0.042).Also,  It has been observed that TB positivity among North Cyprus citizens has increased over the years. However, this increase is not statistically significant (p=0.062). Our results indicated that the higher TB positivity was found in other nations (18.8%) and the TB positivity among North Cyprus citizens has increased over the years. So that, we suggested that the question of  ‘BCG vaccine  is necassary or not ‘ might be revisit by the Ministry of the Health according to our results.