The Facts You Didn't Know About Tuberculosis

• Tuberculosis is a potential bacterial infection that primarily affects the lungs. There are cases in all countries throughout the world, regardless of age or gender.
• TB is the leading infectious reason of death in the world. It is an airborne disease that destroys the lung tissue causing cough or sneezing, an easy means of spreading the disease as per WHO. However, it does not spread via sharing of personal items. The most vulnerable people to the disease are women, children, and those with HIV/AIDS.
• On March 24, 1882, Dr. Robert Koch declared the discovery of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis. It is a bacterium that causes Tuberculosis (TB). The invention was crucial and helped control and eliminate the disease as many people were dying from it back then.
• World Health Organization (WHO) implemented an END TB strategy in 2014. It is called as "Blueprint for Countries to end the TB epidemic by driving down TB deaths, incidence and eliminating catastrophic costs”.

Triggers to TB:

• Besides being airborne, social conditions like malnutrition, overcrowded houses, HIV, diabetes, smoking, and excessive consumption of alcohol act as triggers for TB.
• According to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, if there is no major shift in the world's fight against TB from focusing on biomedical solutions to integrating biomedical treatments with social activism, the disease and resistance to the drugs will worsen.

Constructive Approach to Fight Tuberculosis:

• A new study advocates a "biosocial" approach combining interventions in nutrition, urban planning, occupational health, addiction recovery, and mental health.
• It will reduce both illness and fatality, alleviate poverty, and aid for defensible development. It will provide present and future generations with opportunities for better living.” It will meet the needs of the poor today and provide a better place to live for generations to come.

Theme - Invest to End TB:

• Every day, over 4100 people are losing their lives to TB and approximately 28000 people fall sick. Global efforts in the fight against TB have saved approximately 66 million lives since 2000. However, COVID 19 pandemic has reversed all the progress made in the fight to end TB. It was the first time in over a decade TB death increased in 2020.
• The WHO has called for achieving a world free of TB by 2035, a Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by world leaders, that includes a target to end TB by 2030.
• The theme of World TB Day 2022 is Invest to End TB, which conveys that there is a critical need to invest resources to intensify the fight against TB and achieve the goal of END TB.