World TB Day 2018: Know more

The estimates of World Health Organisation depicts 9 million yearly sick people and 33% of them are being missed by the health systems. Tuberculosis claims the second highest number of lives globally.

Today is the World TB day and follow our previous news regarding the same, we will now be discussing few key points about tuberculosis.

The bacteria that causes tuberculosis is an airborne pathogen. Air-borne bacteria are bacteria or microorganism that travels through air and passes to the person nearby causing infection.

The disease can spread through close contact, can infect up to 10-15 people, and is said to be among top three causes of death among women aged 15 to 44 years.

The estimates of World Health Organisation depicts 9 million yearly sick people and 33% of them are being missed by the health systems. Tuberculosis claims the second highest number of lives globally.

The symptoms of tuberculosis can be mild for months that might include including weight loss, fever, cough, night sweats, chest pain etc.).

According to the doctors, the Tuberculosis can be of two types: Latent TB and Active TB.

In the first type of TB the bacterial remains in the inactive state inside the body. They can become active anytime. Until they become active, there would be no symptoms of the disease.

In the second type, the bacteria starts to harm and symptoms are visible. It can be transmitted easily to others.

If we talk about the latent TB becoming active, then there is a ten percent chance of latent TB becoming an active one. This risk is more in the people whose immune system is weak, for example, people who smoke, or under malnutrition or people with HIV.

According to the chart shown below, among the people who are HIV positive, 1.3 million deaths due to TB in the regions covered by WHO. The highest of them are in South-East Asia followed by Africa. The statistics are for the year 2016 and taken from tbfacts.org. 

Among the people who are HIV negative, the deaths were 374,000.

TB is a disease that spread irrespective of the gender or ethnicity and most people who avoid health check should be beware of the same.

Diagnosed with time and taking proper medication for the same can easily eradicate the disease and make the patient healthy.

So, On World TB Day 2018, we wish everyone to be safe and healthy and understand the nuances of the disease so that the life losses due to the same can be eventually reduced to zero.

Among the Sustainable Development Goal, one of the health targets is to end TB epidemic by 2030.