"Reach the 3 million"

World Tuberculosis Day - 24 March 2014

The "missed" 3 million

In 2014, the slogan for World Tuberculosis Day is "Reach the 3 million".

TB is curable, but current efforts to find, treat and cure everyone who gets ill with the disease are not sufficient. Of the 9 million people a year who get sick with TB, a third of them are "missed" by health systems.

The burden of tuberculosis

Progress towards global targets for reductions in TB cases and deaths in recent years has been impressive: TB mortality has fallen over 45% worldwide since 1990, and incidence is declining.

• In 2012, there were an estimated 8.6 million new cases of TB and 1.3 million people died from TB.
• Over 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Poor communities and vulnerable groups are most affected, but this airborne disease is a risk to all.
• TB is among the top 3 causes of death for women aged 15 to 44.
• There were an estimated 500 000 cases and 74 000 deaths among children in 2012.

Challenges

• Around 3 million people (equal to 1 in 3 people falling ill with TB) are currently being ‘missed’ by health systems.
• There is slow progress in tackling multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB): 3 out of 4 MDR-TB cases still remain without a diagnosis, and around 16 000 MDR-TB cases reported to WHO in 2012 were not put on treatment.
• Provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for TB patients known to be living with HIV needs to increase to meet WHO’s recommendation that all TB patients living with HIV promptly receive ART.

REF--

http://www.who.int/campaigns/tb-day/2014/event/en/