How to measure the prevalence of tuberculosis in a population

The World Health Assembly has defined targets for measuring performance of tuberculosis (TB) control programmes, which have been included in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals. To be able to measure progress towards these targets TB control programmes need epidemiological information. At the moment, surveillance data of countries with a high burden of TB are insufficient to assess performance of the TB control programme as a result of incompleteness or low quality. Several high-burden countries have performed TB prevalence surveys to obtain epidemiological information. As a standardized method for TB prevalence surveys has not been defined, we discuss the different options for measuring prevalence and their advantages and disadvantages. Most surveys use comparable strategies. Alternatives strategies at lower cost need to be evaluated.