Hi Readers!
Today is World Tuberculosis Day. This day is to raise awareness about the health, social and economic consequences of Tuberculosis (TB). In 1882, Dr Robert Koch announced that he discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which paved the way to diagnosing and curing the disease.
Each year, close to 28,000 people become ill with TB and nearly four thousand of them lose their lives, which makes this the deadliest infection! TB is preventable and curable. Since the year 2000, global efforts have saved approximately 63 million lives.
The clock is ticking! A World TB Day campaign for action!
On World TB Day, WHO calls on everyone to keep the promise to:
- Accelerate the End TB Response to reach the targets set in Sustainable Development Goals, WHO End TB Strategy, the Moscow Declaration to End TB and the political declaration of the UN High-Level Meeting on TB.
- Diagnose and treat 40 million people with TB by 2022 including 3.5 million children and 1.5 million people with drug-resistant TB. This is in line with WHO’s overall drive towards Universal Health Coverage and the WHO Director General’s flagship initiative “Find. Treat. All. #EndTB” jointly with the Global Fund and Stop TB Partnership.
- Reach 30 million people with TB preventive treatment by 2022 so that those people most at risk receive TB preventive treatment, including 24 million household contacts of TB patients – 4 million of whom are children under 5 – and 6 million people living with HIV.
- Mobilize sufficient and sustainable financing to reach USD 13 billion a year to support efforts to end TB; for every USD 1 invested to end TB, USD 43 is returned as the benefits of a healthy functioning society (Economist/ Copenhagen Consensus).
- Invest in TB research to reach at least USD 2 billion a year for better science, better tools and better delivery.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING. IT’S TIME TO KEEP OUR PROMISES. IT’S TIME TO #END TB.
You can find the campaign tool kit here
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Be Kind to one another!
Julia, Sexologist
Julia, Sexologist 