24th March - World T.B Day

World TB Day, falling on 24 March each year, is designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of several million people each year, mostly in the third world. 24 March commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB bacillus. At the time of Koch's announcement in Berlin, TB was raging through Europe and the Americas, causing the death of one out of every seven people. Koch's discovery opened the way toward diagnosing and curing tuberculosis.

I am stopping TB is more than slogan. It is the start of a two-year campaign that belongs to people everywhere who are doing their part to Stop TB.

This year's World TB Day is about celebrating the lives and stories of people affected by TB: women, men and children who have taken TB treatment; nurses; do

About

The Stop TB Partnership was established in 2000 to eliminate tuberculosis as a public health problem and ultimately to realize a world free of TB. It comprises a network of more then 500 international organizations, countries, donors from the public and private sectors, and nongovernmental and governmental organizations that have expressed an interest in working together to achieve this goal.ctors; researchers; community workers--anyone who has contributed towards the global fight against TB.

What is T.B (Tuberculosis)?

Tuberculosis, or TB, is an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs. It is transmitted from person to person via droplets from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease.

In healthy people, infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis often causes no symptoms, since the person's immune system acts to “wall off” the bacteria. The symptoms of active TB of the lung are coughing, sometimes with sputum or blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats. Tuberculosis is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.