[Tuberculosis in Greenland 1994. A minor outbreak of new cases of tuberculosis in the village of Kullorsuaq].

An outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis was detected in 1994 in a small village, Kullorsuaq, located 300 kilometres north of Upernavik in the north-western part of Greenland. The inhabitants of Kullorsuaq mainly live off subsistence, hunting, seal-hunting and fishing. Too many people were living in bad housing and with a general lack of sanitation facilities. There had been a few serious cases of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1993, and when three new cases of tuberculosis in school children were diagnosed in April 1994, the authorities arranged for all 292 inhabitants of Kullorsuaq to be examined by chest X-ray. We defined tuberculosis as an infiltration seen on X-ray when tuberculosis was discovered in the near environment together with a strongly positive mantoux test. We found 20 cases of tuberculosis, two were smear positive by microscopy, both confirmed by culture, and a further five cases were diagnosed only by culture. By DNA-fingerprint-analysis we found all culture positive cases to be exactly alike. Two cases of lung cancer were also diagnosed.