March  24, 2008 is World Tuberculosis day  

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called for increased international action on World TB Day to stop the global tuberculosis epidemic that is killing 4,000 people every day. In a message to mark the day, Mr Ban said: "The man-made multi-drug resistant strain and its even more lethal form, extensively drug-resistant TB, are both spreading. That is why the theme of this year's day is 'I Am Stopping TB'.     According to the findings of WHO's latest global tuberculosis control report, India is the world's TB capital recording an estimated 1.9 million new cases every year.  However, only 70% of these are actually detected and put on the highly effective DOTS programme. Each of these active TB patients left undetected go on to infect 10-15 people on an average, every year. The report said that for every five TB cases diagnosed globally in 2006, four went undetected. Over six lakh Indians, unaware that they suffer from tuberculosis, are spreading the disease among healthy individuals, seriously jeopardizing global efforts to halve new infection and death rates before 2015.     WHO estimates that a third of the world's population is infected with TB, which depletes the incomes of the world's poorest communities by $12 billion a year. However, only 61% of all TB cases worldwide are registered. Last month, WHO said drug-resistant TB was spreading faster than ever. Globally, there are about 500,000 new cases of drug-resistant TB every year, about 5 percent of the 9 million new TB cases, WHO said.

The theme of this year's day is 'I Am Stopping TB'.      * TB is contagious and spread through the air. * If untreated each person with active TB infects 10-15 people every day. * 2 billion people or one third of the world population are infected with TB.  * TB kills 4400 people per day. * 1.7 million people died from TB in 2006. * There were 9.2 million new cases of TB in 2006.

India has reported nearly 1.4 million TB cases in the year 2006 contributing to one-fifth of the total global cases. The country continued to report high morbidity and mortality due to tuberculosis and as many as 1.39 million cases were reported in 2006, according to a report on tuberculosis in the South East Asia region by the WHO. In 2005, more than 3.2 lakh deaths were reported due to tuberculosis in the country, it said.   The pace to control the disease slowed slightly in 2006 majorly due to India and China which accounted for 63 per cent of the new cases in the past year, the report released on the occasion of World TB Day on Monday said.    Acording to Nani Nair India is not really lagging behind as far as reporting TB cases was concerned. "In India a large number of patients are getting treated from private practitioner whose number goes unrecorded". There is an increase from 9.1 million cases in 2005, due to population growth. India, China, Indonesia, South Africa and Nigeria rank first to fifth respectively in terms of absolute number of cases.   The African region has the highest incidence rate per capita, the report said adding there were an estimated 14.4 million prevalent cases of TB in 2006. An estimated 1.5 million people died from TB in 2006. In addition, another  2,00,000 people with HIV died from HIV-associated TB, the report said.   In developing countries, WHO's main tuberculosis treatment program depends on patients volunteering to be tested, instead of doctors seeking out patients. WHO's Espinal estimated that only about 60 percent of infected patients are diagnosed.

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