Over 10m people fell ill with tuberculosis world wide, 1.4m died of TB and 465,000 were diagnosed with drug resistant TB in 2019 only, a public health crisis! Do you know that a quarter of the world's population is infected with Tuberculosis? That's about 2B people but most of this number are latent TB carriers making them non contagious and unlikely to die of the disease. Because of its devastating toll on the health of the people, economy of the world and hours of work, it has drawn concern as a public health disease of great interest. TB affects anybody, sex and ethnicity. It is found in all the countries of the world. From statistics, it affects youths in the most productive stage of their lives and the elderly. It also has a predilection for people with decreased immunity and poverty-stricken environments like third world countries. It is the number one infectious disease cause of death(before HIV). About 30 countries contribute about 87% of the world's TB with only about 7 contributing two third of the number. The leading country with the highest number of TB cases is India, followed by China, Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and South Africa. Over the years WHO, the UN and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations, through combined efforts, have been able to treat about 60m people from 2000 to 2019. The target of the SDG 3.3 to end TB by 2030 includes the reduction of deaths from TB by 90% and reduction of TB incidence by 80%. This dream is becoming unattainable. Time is running out and the world is yet to achieve half of this goal. This is why the theme for this year's world TB day is, "the clock is ticking". March 24th is set aside globally to commemorate World TB day. This is the day Dr. Robert Koch, in 1882, discovered the bacteria causing TB thereby opening the doors for other scientific breakthroughs in the management of the disease. The Rural Doctor Initiative(RDI) in conjunction with the Kateri medical services, in a bid to improve the health statistics in the community it is hosted in, rolled out a program to join forces with the global community to end the spread of TB and achieve the SDG targets.
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