Anuska Sen, Team BioXone
The World Tuberculosis (TB) Day is commemorated on the 24th of April each year by the World Health Organization (WHO). This day is observed to spread public awareness about the life-threatening outcomes of tuberculosis disease and the need to adopt various methods to end the worldwide occurrence of TB. On the 24th of April, 1882, Dr. Robert Koch announced his discovery of the causative agent of TB. This World TB Day marks the 139th anniversary of Koch’s revolutionary discovery.
Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium named Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which generally attacks the lungs. However, the bacteria can spread to other vital body organs such as the brain and the spinal cord. TB is a communicable disease that spreads from an infected person to a healthy person via his coughs or sneezes. There are mainly two forms of the disease, one a latent form and the other which actively shows signs and symptoms. Latent TB is not much contagious but can transform to active TB in the future due to an increase in the bacterial load in the future. On the other hand, active TB is highly communicable and can even be spread from an infected person to an unaffected individual, via the minute saliva particles that may have been accidentally spitting while talking. Until and unless a person is infected with a drug-resistant variant of tuberculosis, the disease can be treated (even completely curable) with long-term medications. Most medications used to treat tuberculosis include Isoniazid, Rifampin, Ethambutol, Pyrazinamide, etc. These drugs are administered either singly or in combination with other drugs depending on the severity of the disease.
The theme of World TB Day 2021 is “The clock is ticking”, which tries to conveys the message that there is very little time left for us to control the spread and occurrence of TB until it becomes too late to prevent the disease. Especially, during the ongoing critical situation of the pandemic, End TB progress has been put at serious risk.
According to the statistics of WHO, in the year 2019, approximately 10,000,000 people fell ill with TB; 1,400,000 people died of TB in the same year and 465,000 people were diagnosed with drug-resistant TB. On average, the data says that nearly 28,000 people fall ill with TB every single day and ~4000 individuals lose their lives to TB each day. However, the sad part of the story is that although tuberculosis is a preventable and curable disease, with various drugs available for its treatment, the death number is still so high. The End TB Strategy by WHO aims at creating a world free of TB. Its goal is to reach an incidence of zero TB cases and zero deaths in the world with the help of various government policies and supportive systems. Till today, tuberculosis remains to be an epidemic in much of the world (mostly in developing countries), destroying the lives of many each day (approximately 3 people in the world die per minute due to TB). WHO records show that since the year 2000, nearly 63,000,000 lives have been saved by global efforts to end tuberculosis. So, it is clearly visible that with increasing awareness and prevention, TB can be prevented and deaths can be avoided by proper treatment and medications.
Also read: The Great Oxidation Event of Mars is similar to the Earth!!!
References:
World TB Day 2021 – WHO – https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-tb-day/world-tb-day-2021
The End TB Strategy – WHO – https://www.who.int/tb/strategy/end-tb/en/
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