Migration is fuelling an alarming rise in UK Tuberculosis cases, health chiefs have confirmed. After more than a decade of declining incidents, numbers are rapidly rising in what officials said was a "serious public health issue".

The crisis comes as net migration to the UK in the year to June 2024 was 728,000, while more illegal migrants arrived between January and April than in the same four-month period since 2018. Action plans to tackle the crisis are failin, with the spike in cases set to see Britain stripped of its status as a low incidence country by the World Health Organisation. MP Rupert Lowe said: “We are importing preventable, high-risk diseases. This is what happens when we allow unchecked migration from countries with poor health infrastructure and high infection rates - without proper screening, controls, or follow-up. Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

According to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the body responsible for preparing for and responding to infectious diseases, individuals born outside of the UK continued to account for most TB notifications in England with almost one third diagnosed within five years of arriving. This has increased since 2019, when it was around one fifth.

It said: "There is a strong association between the increase in TB incidence and rise in migration from high or very high incidence countries, with 80% of all notifications in 2023 in people born outside the UK, despite a doubling in the number of people screened before entry to the UK between 2021 and 2023.

"The number of eligible new entrant migrants tested through the NHS Latent TB infection programme was more than 35,000, but this represented only 11% of the total eligible cohort. Work is underway to identify the optimal and most cost effective control and prevention strategies to tackle this increase."

Tuberculosis is the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, and is associated with deprivation, with infection common in large urban areas.

UKHSA and NHS England developed a TB action plan to improve the prevention, detection and control of the disease.

But data shows reported notifications in England increased by 11% (almost 500 additional cases) in 2023, with 4,855 notifications of the disease compared with 4,380 in 2022.

Provisional data for last year shows reported notifications increased by 13% compared to 2023 (more than 600 additional cases) in a worrying continuation of the upward trend.

The crisis is so severe UKHSA is drawing up a new crisis plan saying "renewed action is necessary to keep rates below the defined low-incidence threshold of 10 cases per 100,000 population".

In 2023, England recorded its largest annual increase in TB cases since enhanced surveillance started in 2000.

Provisional figures for 2024 indicate a further rise in notifications. Last year 5,480 people became unwell with TB in England in the largest year-on-year increase recorded since 1970 and a disturbing trend that exploded in 2021.

TB is a contagious bacterial infection, primarily affecting the lungs, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and spread through airborne droplets. While treatable with antibiotics, it can be fatal if left untreated.

It remains most common in large urban areas, like London. But health experts are deeply worried about increases in parts of the country where incidence has historically been lower, such as the South West and North East.

Global TB incidence rates have increased since the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

TB is the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, surpassing Covid. The bacterial infection primarily affects the lungs but can also impact other parts of the body. Symptoms include a persistent cough lasting more than three weeks, a high temperature, night sweats, loss of appetite, and weight loss.

Around 80% of active cases in the UK occur among people born in countries where TB is common, like Somalia, Philippines, Indonesia and India.

About one quarter of the global population is estimated to have been infected with TB bacteria, but most people will not go on to develop disease and some will clear the infection. Those who are infected but not yet ill with the disease cannot transmit it.

Each year, 10 million people fall ill with TB but despite being a preventable and curable disease, 1.5 million people die making it the world’s top infectious killer. The World Health Organisation wants to eliminate TB by 2035.

Dr Esther Robinson, head of the TB unit at UKHSA, said: "TB is curable and preventable, but the disease remains a serious public health issue in England. While England is still considered a low-incidence country for TB, the rise in cases over recent years means that we are now just below that threshold."