World Tuberculosis Day is observed on March 24 every year. It is designed to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis (TB) and efforts to eliminate the disease.

2016 Theme – “Unite to End TB”

• March 24 commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing to a small group of scientists at the University of Berlin’s Institute of Hygiene that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus
• An ancient disease that has claimed many millions of lives, tuberculosis continues to wreak havoc on public health in many countries in this century.
• As we know, TB spreads from person-to-person through the air.
• TB most heavily impacts the urban poor, where undernourished people live in crowded conditions and commonly face economic, social and cultural barriers to completing the minimum of six months of treatment.
• Currently there is no effective TB vaccine. The standard TB medicines are more than 50 years old and require at least six months of use. Treating multi-drug resistant TB is even longer, involves injections and is arduous.
• TB kills 4000 people globally a day.

Additional Info

World TB Day is one of eight official global public health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization (WHO), along with World Health Day, World Blood Donor Day, World Immunization Week, World Malaria Day, World No Tobacco Day, World Hepatitis Day and World AIDS Day.