ABSTRACT
From 1953, when national reporting of U.S. incident tuberculosis (TB) cases was first fully implemented, through 1984, the number of cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decreased from 84,304 to 22,255. This average annual decline of 5% to 6% was only interrupted by a transient increase in 1980, attributed to cases arising from a large influx of refugees from Southeast Asia (1). This steady decline from 1953 through 1984 led to optimism that tuberculosis could be eliminated from the United States. In 1987, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) called for the establishment of an Advisory Committee (now Council) for the Elimination of Tuberculosis (ACET), whose purpose would be to provide recommendations for eliminating tuberculosis as a U.S. public health problem. In 1989, ACET published a strategic plan for the elimination of tuberculosis in the United States, establishing a goal of tuberculosis elimination (defined as a case rate of less than one per one million population) by the year 2010 (2).
