WTBD: WHO wants more investment to save patients.
Written by News Room on March 25, 2022
The World Health Organization (WHO), on Thursday, commemorated World Tuberculosis Day under the spotlight ‘Invest to End TB. Save Lives’ with focus on the urgent need to invest resources to ramp up the fight against TB and achieve the commitments to end TB made by global leaders.
World TB Day observed March 24 yearly raises public awareness and understanding about TB, which is one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers, its devastating health, social and economic impact on people around the world.
According to the WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a short video message, World TB Day is an opportunity to focus on the people affected by this disease and to call for accelerated action to end TB suffering and deaths, especially in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
CUE IN……. WHO DG
On 24th March, 1882, Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing the disease.
Report says Nigeria ranks first in Africa and sixth amongst 30 countries globally with the highest cases of the disease and that the 2022 World TB Day highlights stigma, discrimination, lack of awareness, poor funding and other factors threatening the elimination of TB in Nigeria.
Despite TB being a vaccine-preventable disease, statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that every year, about 245,000 Nigerians die from the disease, and about 590,000 new cases occur. The data further shows that around 140,000 of this figure are also HIV-positive.
Vincent Ejeh
