About 1,000 people still contract tuberculosis daily in Europe and Central Asia, despite an overall decline of the disease.
That's according to a new report by the Europe Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), co-authored with the World Health Organisation.
The report says the continent will not be free of the disease until the next century at the current low rate of eradication, particularly due to prevalence in countries to the east of the region.
"Multi-resistance tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is still ravaging the European region, making it the most affected area of the entire world," Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO regional director for Europe, said in a statement.
She noted that 50 per cent of cases are reported and only half of those are successfully cured.
Overall cases of the disease in the vast region - stretching from Ireland to Russia - fell by 5.6 per cent between 2012 and 2013.
In 2013, there were about 360,000 reported TB cases with 85 per cent occurring in 18 "high priority" countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including Romania, Georgia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Most of the 38,000 deaths from the disease were also in Eastern Europe and in former Soviet republics.
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