World Tuberculosis Day Today: The clock is ticking! Clarion call to end TB…

Dr Shilpa Totla

The clock is ticking! A World Tuberculosis (TB) Day campaign for action! It calls on everyone to keep the promise to: “Accelerate the End TB Response to reach the targets set in Sustainable Development Goals.” TB is an infectious disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis and spreads through air by a person suffering from TB. The 1990 World Health Organization report on the Global Burden of Disease ranked TB as the seventh most morbidity causing disease in the world, and expected it to continue in the same position up to 2020. Unless properly treated, an infectious pulmonary TB (i.e., the TB of lungs) patient can infect 10–15 people in a year. This means that someone somewhere contracts TB every 4 seconds and 1 of them dies every 10 seconds. TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers. This is because, each day, nearly 4000 lose their lives to TB and close to 28,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 63 million lives since the year 2000. March 24, 1882 is the day when history was created. Renowned researcher Dr Robert Koch came up with the discovery of the “bacterium” as a source of TB infection. This research helped in establishing clarity and various strategies for diagnosing and curing this disease. Therefore, this day is celebrated to raise public awareness about the devastating effects on health, social and economic consequences of TB, and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic. The theme of World TB Day 2021 - ‘The Clock is ticking’ – was brought in as all authorities working on TB eradication and control got drifted and distracted towards the COVID 19 pandemic. The only key to eradicate or minimize TB is the systematic screening of people at risk in a predetermined target group, by assessing symptoms and using tests, examinations or other procedures that can be applied rapidly. Early detection and start of treatment can improve their outcomes and reduce their costs. It can also benefit entire communities at higher risk for TB, by preventing future people from falling ill with TB. A complete medical evaluation for tuberculosis is done by medical history, a physical examination, a chest X-ray and microbiological examination (of sputum or some other appropriate sample). It may also include a tuberculin skin test, other scans and X-rays, surgical biopsy. It’s high time we all unite and spread awareness of this disease and make our nation TB-free.

(The writer is pathologist).