World TB Day celebrated on 24 March each year, is an opportunity to raise awareness about the burden of tuberculosis (TB) worldwide and the status of TB prevention and care efforts. It is also an opportunity to mobilize political and social commitment for further progress in efforts to end TB.
2017 is the second year of a two-year "Unite to End TB" campaign for World TB Day. This year, WHO will place a special focus on uniting efforts to "Leave No One Behind", including actions to address stigma, discrimination, marginalization and overcome barriers to access care.
World TB Day provides the platform for affected persons and communities, civil society organizations, health-care providers, policy makers, development partners and others to advocate, discuss and plan further collaboration to fulfil the promise of reaching all people with quality TB prevention and care services, as well as enabling TB prevention through multisectoral development efforts.
Key facts
- Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide.
- In 2015, 10.4 million people fell ill with TB and 1.8 million died from the disease (including 0.4 million among people with HIV). Over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
- Six countries account for 60% of the total, with India leading the count, followed by Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa
- In 2015, an estimated 1 million children became ill with TB and 170 000 children died of TB (excluding children with HIV).
- TB is a leading killer of HIV-positive people: in 2015, 35% of HIV deaths were due to TB.
- Globally in 2015, an estimated 480 000 people developed multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB).
- TB incidence has fallen by an average of 1.5% per year since 2000. This needs to accelerate to a 4–5% annual decline to reach the 2020 milestones of the "End TB Strategy".
- An estimated 49 million lives were saved through TB diagnosis and treatment between 2000 and 2015.
- Ending the TB epidemic by 2030 is among the health targets of the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals.
According to WHO Global TB Report 2016, Bangladesh is one of the world’s 30 high TB burden countries with annual occurrence of 362,000 new Tuberculosis cases. About 73, 000 people die annually due to Tuberculosis. Another important challenge is Multi Drug Resistance Tuberculosis (MDR TB) - with an estimated 9,700 MDR cases per year.
The National TB Programme (NTP) of Bangladesh along with its partners has been maintaining good basic TB control services with reasonable case detection and excellent treatment outcomes. Bangladesh is the first country in the Region that introduced shorter treatment regimen for MDR-TB and is achieving high cure rate for MDR-TB patients (75%). National Strategic Plan for TB Control for 2018-2022 is under process of updating. Free of cost TB control services have been made available throughout the country and are integrated with general health services.
WHO has been providing technical support to the National Tuberculosis Control Program (NTP) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to strengthen its activities in addressing the challenges of TB/HIV, multidrug resistant (MDR) TB and the use of new technologies. For example, the nationwide TB prevalence survey was recently finalized by NTP. WHO is also working with NTP on drafting the protocol for a drug resistance survey (DRS) planned this year. The results of DRS would be able to provide a better understanding of the national situation and trend of drug resistance TB in the country.