Cross-sectional studies of tuberculosis prevalence in Cambodia between 2002 and 2011

Tuberculosis remains a major global health problem, with 8.6 million estimated incident cases and 1.3 million estimated deaths in 2012. Cambodia ranks second among the 22 countries with a high tuberculosis burden. Since the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the DOTS (directly observed treatment, short-course) strategy in 1994, which is based on the passive detection of cases of smear-positive tuberculosis, this policy has been the foundation of global tuberculosis control. Cambodia’s national tuberculosis control programme introduced DOTS in hospitals in 1994 and decentralized it to primary care health centres between 1999 and 2004 with the technical support of WHO and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.