Medical matters: The dream is to conquer TB worldwide
World TB Day was celebrated on Monday and the slogan for this year was "Reach the three million".
World Tuberculosis Day was celebrated on Monday and the slogan for this year was “Reach the three million”.
TB is curable, but current efforts to find, treat and cure everyone who contracts the disease, are not sufficient.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), of the nine million people a year who have TB, a third are “missed” by health systems.
Many of these three million people live in the world’s poorest, most vulnerable communities or are among marginalised populations such as migrant workers, refugees and internally displaced persons, prisoners, indigenous people, ethnic minorities and drug users.
WHO and the Stop TB Partnership, hosted at WHO, are together promoting World TB Day.
It provides the opportunity for affected persons and the communities in which they live, governments, civil society organisations, health-care providers, and international partners to call for further action to reach the three million.
All partners can help take forward innovative approaches to ensure that everyone suffering from TB has access to diagnosis, treatment and cure.
The burden of tuberculosis
World TB Day is an opportunity to raise awareness about the burden of this disease worldwide and the status of prevention and control efforts. It is also an occasion to mobilise political and social commitment for further progress.
Attaining global targets for reduction of TB cases and deaths in recent years, has been impressive:
mortality has decreased by more than 45 per cent worldwide since 1990, and incidence is still on the decline. New tools such as rapid diagnostics are helping transform response to the disease and new life-saving drugs are being introduced.
But the global burden remains huge and significant challenges persist.
In 2012 there were an estimated 8,6 million new cases and 1,3 million people died from TB.
Over 95 per cent of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Poor communities and vulnerable groups are most affected, but this airborne disease is a risk to everyone.
TB is among the top three causes of death for women aged 15 to 44.
There were an estimated 500 000 cases and 74 000 deaths among children in 2012.
Challenges
About three million people (equal to one in three people falling ill with TB) are currently being “missed” by health systems.
There is slow progress in tackling multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB): three out of four cases still remain undiagnosed, and about 16 000 who were reported to WHO in 2012 were not put on treatment.
Provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for TB patients known to be living with HIV, needs to be increased to meet WHO’s recommendation that all TB patients living with HIV promptly receive ART.
