SETTING: Ashti and Karanja tahsils, Wardha district, Maharashtra State, Central India.

OBJECTIVE: To find and compare the prevalence of bacillary positive pulmonary tuberculosis amongst the different tribes and in the non-tribal population.

DESIGN: Prevalence study of pulmonary tuberculosis by house-to-house survey of symptoms among tribal (n = 20 596) and non-tribal (n = 93670) populations aged 5 years and over, between September 1989 and November 1990.

RESULTS: The prevalence of smear and/or culture-positive tuberculosis/100000 population was 133 in the tribal and 144 in the non-tribal population. The difference in prevalence of symptomatic individuals and sputum-positive cases among the tribal and the non-tribal populations was statistically significant only in the symptomatic individuals/100000 (P = 0.01). The prevalence of cases in both groups was higher in males than females; however this difference was significant only in the tribal group (P = 0.05). Only two of the 46 tribes encountered, the Mana and Pawara tribes, showed a high prevalence, of 730 and 612/100000, respectively. The three other tribes with positive cases (the Gond group) had prevalences comparable to that of the non-tribal population.

CONCLUSION: The prevalence of tuberculosis in tribal people was comparable to that of the non-tribal population.