Today is World TB Day 2017

World TB Day, falling on March 24th each year, is designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of nearly one-and-a-half million people each year, mostly in developing countries. It 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 towards diagnosing and curing TB.

In advance of World TB Day the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling on countries and partners to Unite to End TB.

The call comes as we enter the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ending TB by 2030 is a target of the SDGs and the goal of the WHO End TB Strategy.

That is an ambitious aim. While there has been significant progress in the fight against TB, with 43 million lives saved since 2000, the battle is only half-won: over 4,000 people lose their lives each day to this leading infectious disease. Many of the communities that are most burdened by tuberculosis are those that are poor, vulnerable and marginalized.

Ending TB will only be achieved with greater collaboration within and across governments, and with partners from civil society, communities, researchers, the private sector and development agencies. This means taking a whole-of-society and multidisciplinary approach, in the context of universal health coverage.

Momentum is growing at country and community levels – including in the 30 countries with the highest TB burden (over 85% of the global burden).  A number of countries are strengthening the strategic agendas of their TB programmes, by adopting newer tools, extending access to care and linking with other parts of government to reduce the financial costs borne by patients. Other countries are partnering with researchers to speed development of diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines, and to improve delivery.

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