World TB Day
24 March 2021
World Tuberculosis (TB) Day is commemorated annually on 24 March to raise public awareness about the ongoing impact of TB and the need to enhance efforts to end TB. Global efforts in TB care are estimated to have saved more than 60 million lives in the last 20 years alone. Yet this is not enough to reach the targets of WHO’s End TB Strategy in the coming years.
ISR-WHO World TB Day 2021 scientific symposium
Prof Marks
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Society of Radiology (ISR) staged a special ISR-WHO World TB Day 2021 scientific symposium: Systematic screening for TB and the role of chest radiography on Tuesday, 23 March 2021 (See website).
This included a talk by Prof Guy Marks who has had a long and active leadership role within the APSR, including a lengthy term as APSR Councillor for Australia, APSR Tuberculosis Assembly Head and APSR Education Committee member.
Global respiratory groups join WHO,
calling on world leaders to act on the commitments made to end TB
FIRS press release
Tokyo, 24 March 2021
In support of World TB Day, 24 March, the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS), of which the APSR is a founding member, joins the World Health Organisation (WHO) campaign urging governments to act on the commitments made to end TB.
TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers. According to the WHO, each day nearly 4,000 lose their lives to TB and close to 28,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. This equates to 1.5 million deaths and 10 million people falling ill to TB each year.
Despite significant progress against TB in recent years, 3 million people with TB disease are still undiagnosed. One in three people with TB do not access quality care for reasons ranging from gaps in research and development and insufficient or underfunded health services, to long and difficult treatments or because of stigma. In addition, a quarter of the world’s population is estimated to be living with TB infection, the bacteria that causes the disease. People with TB infection are estimated to have a 5-10 percent chance of developing the disease over their lifetime, but TB preventive therapy reduces a person’s risk of developing active TB by 60 to 90 percent.
To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals targets and the United Nations High-Level Meeting commitments by 2030 and 2022 respectively, governments must accelerate their investments and actions to ensure access to quality TB prevention and care.
FIRS calls for urgent action to advance TB prevention through rapid scale up of access to preventive treatment for TB infection for those most at risk of falling ill of TB including:
- Four million children under 5 years of age
- Twenty million other household contacts of people affected by TB
- Six million people living with HIV and AIDS.
“Time is running out. Globally, we are falling short of the target to provide at least 30 million people with TB preventive treatment by 2022.” said Mark Cohen, President of FIRS. “We are at a critical time, as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot put End TB progress at risk.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the world aware of how deadly respiratory viruses can be. We have seen how public health and political will can be mobilised quickly and it’s time for us to treat TB as the emergency that it is.
Find out more about the WHO 2021 World TB Day campaign.
About the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS)
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