Tuberculosis is one of the most common issues that continues to remain a cause for concern. In order to curb its spread and to engage with the public through awareness, March 24 was designated as the World Tuberculosis Day by the World Health Organisation. March 24 each year, is marked and designed to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis and to expand efforts to eliminate the disease. In 2012, 8.6 million people fell ill with TB, and 1.3 million died from the disease, mostly in developing countries.

World Tuberculosis Day falls as one of eight official global public health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization. In 2016, the World Health Organisation has devised a campaign that will run under the strong and action-oriented tagline of “Unite to End TB”. The idea underlying this is that people should come together to not only spread awareness, but to work closely as partners in putting together efforts of strong mobilization on ground, to undertake high level advocacy and to call for all focal groups of people, regardless of their nationality, age, gender or profession, to work towards bringing an end to tuberculosis.

The motto of “Unite to End TB” will also be augmented by supplementary materials that carry specific messages that adjusted to the different partners’ local contexts. In 2014, there were 9.6 million cases of active TB which resulted in 1.5 million affected deaths. But, the number of new cases each year has decreased since 2000, and globally, tuberculosis has begun to come down in number thanks to awareness efforts such as this. This only indicates the power in global awareness campaigns that drive action and effort.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
http://www.timeanddate.com/
http://www.who.int
http://www.tbonline.info/

Picture Courtesy:

cdc.gov

aids.gov/

userscontent2.emaze.com/