Tuesday, January 13, 2009

World TB day





You can judge the success of World TB day in terms of raising awareness by whether you are aware of it or not. It's on March 24th every year to celebrate the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis. It is the brainchild of the Stop TB Partnership - established in the year 2000 with the goal of eliminating TB as a public health problem.

The World Health Organization is also working to dramatically reduce the burden of TB, and halve TB deaths and prevalence by 2015, through its Stop TB Strategy and supporting the Global Plan to Stop TB. What are they planning on doing differently this time, compared to the 1990-2000 attempt? Was the problem with funding (ie lack of), with their strategy or with the rise of AIDS and the interaction with Tuberculosis?

On a vaguely related theme, check out this earlier post on World Toilet Day.

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