[Employees and regular customers of restaurants and discos as transmitters of tuberculosis].

It is often maintained that tuberculosis is a disease affecting only individuals and that it scarcely causes epidemics any longer. Public health authorities state that this notion needs to be considerably corrected. Precisely because the incidence of tuberculosis has, to a large extent, been declining over past decades, the point in time for initial infection has been largely pushed back into the middle-aged group. In particular, alcoholics and those with a weakened immune system are subject to tuberculosis diseases, which represent a risk for contact persons. Those most at risk are young people whose immune system has never had to combat TB. Above all, if an unknown bacterial source, a regular customer, a waiter or disc jockey, coughs in a restaurant or disco, there can easily be a small or even large epidemic of tuberculosis. Especially today, therefore, importance is placed on consistent "environmental" examinations by the public health authorities in accordance with the Federal Law on Epidemics. The necessity and effectiveness of this measure is demonstrated using the example of an outbreak of tuberculosis in a disco, whereby a waitress and a disc jockey were confirmed as TB cases in a routine examination. Within five years, 19 active lung tuberculosis cases were discovered among those going to that disco. Three of those infected have respectively caused two further cases of the disease in their close contact circles.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)