World Tuberculosis Day 2021: Facts About The Disease, How To Observe The Event

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that affects millions of people every year. On World Tuberculosis Day, people can do their part by helping to spread awareness about it.

World Tuberculosis Day is on March 24, the day Dr. Robert Koch discovered the bacterium that causes TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, in 1884.

TB is one of the "deadliest infectious killers" in the world today, killing some 4,000 people every day, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. However, millions of lives have also been saved, thanks to the efforts being made to help spread awareness about it.

But what is TB, exactly? It is a potentially serious infection that spreads from one person to another when someone with the condition speaks, coughs or sings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained.

Once someone else breathes the bacteria in, they can settle in the lungs and start to grow.

But not everyone who gets infected gets sick. Compared to active TB, wherein a person falls ill and may inadvertently spread it to others, latent TB bacteria are inactive and the infection is not contagious, the Mayo Clinic explained. However, it can still turn active, which is why it's important for people to get tested. If it is not treated properly, TB can be fatal, the CDC said.

This World Tuberculosis Day, let's look at some important facts about TB, courtesy the Mayo Clinic, the CDC and the WHO.

• TB is preventable and a majority of cases are curable with proper medicine and treatment.
• Although the TB bacteria typically attack the lungs, it can also attack other organs such as the kidney, brain and spine. TB is not infectious in other parts of the body.
• TB does not spread through contact, such as sharing food, shaking someone's hands or touching toilet seats.
• In 2019, 10 million people got infected with TB and 1.4 million of them died.
• TB is said to be the top killer of people with HIV. Among those who died of TB in 2019, some 208,000 were people with HIV.
• TB can infect people of all age groups.
• TB is present in all countries. Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean Islands and Africa have higher rates of tuberculosis than other regions. In the U.S., TB was reported in all states in 2016, with California, Texas, New York and Florida leading the list.
• Drug-resistance is also a problem with TB, as the bacteria are able to survive the medications used to treat it in the past. In 2019, 465,000 people fell ill with drug-resistant TB.
• Early detection is not only important for better health outcomes, it also reduces the risk of having other members of the community falling ill.
• There's a vaccine for TB. Although not widely used in the U.S., the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine has been given to infants and young children in other countries where the disease is more common.
• The global TB incidence has been falling by 2% each year.
• Since 2000, efforts to combat TB have saved about 63 million lives.

What can we do to observe World Tuberculosis Day?

Volunteering or donating to organizations that are dedicated to eradicating TB are good ways to mark the occasion.

A simpler way to observe the day is by helping spread awareness about TB. It may seem like a disease from the past, but it is still a public health issue.

And people with a dormant version of TB may not even know about it. Hence, raising awareness about the importance of getting tested can also end up saving lives.