For this important medical discovery, which has saved and is saving countless lives, March 24 is designated as World TB Day.
The theme of World TB Day 2020 is "The Time is Now" and emphasizes the urgency to act based on the commitments of world leaders.
In Koch's time, the disease, which mainly affects the lungs, literally reaped people in Europe and America, causing one death for every seven people. The German doctor's discovery paved the way for its diagnosis, treatment and potential eradication.
According to the WHO, nearly 4,500 people die every day from tuberculosis and around 30,000 people become ill from the disease, which is both preventable and curable. Since 2000, a total of 54 million lives have been saved thanks to global efforts to combat tuberculosis and the mortality rate has been reduced by 42%.
World TB Day is a reminder that, despite the tools available to medical science, tuberculosis has been threatening again since 1985, due to the resistance of the microbe and the spread of the AIDS virus. Areas with a serious tuberculosis problem are Africa, Asia, South Africa and many parts of Eastern Europe.
3-4 million people die each year from tuberculosis, including 500,000 children, making it the most deadly infectious disease, more deadly than AIDS.
From the available data, in recent years there has been an increase in the number of TB cases in patients belonging to vulnerable social groups (refugees/migrants, prisoners, illegal drug users, immunocompromised persons, etc.).) and isolation rates of multiresistant strains of the mycobacterium tuberculosis close to the average of European countries.
Source.gr
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