24th of March, World TB Day

24th of March, World TB Day

24th of March

Every year, March 24th marks World Tuberculosis Day (WTD). The annual event allows on the one hand, a balance of the interventions and programs aimed to improve the control of this terrible disease and on the other hand, it is an opportunity to evaluate the progress made by the medical world's progress in discovering some efficient medicines and vaccines.

Although there have been anti tuberculosis medicines for over 100 years, although there have been more performing therapeutic strategies, especially in poor and in progress of development countries. The evidence is given by the over 9 millions of new cases and what's worse over 1 million and half of deceases caused by tuberculosis. Could this disease be the century's disease? Here it is a question to which the answer is still waited to be given by the specialists.

This year's campaign, dedicated to WTD, will be carried out under the motto "Together we fight Tuberculosis!" This desire involves the close collaboration between the governmental institutions, civil society and affected communities. Only this partnership can determine reaching the objective and the disease's control can be improved.

Another condition, in fact an essential one, is providing sufficient grants by the governmental institutions for strengthening and developing the TB control interventions.

This year's WTD events in Romania were hosted by the "Marius Nasta" Pneumophtyziology Institute in Bucharest and enjoyed the participation of some important personalities in our medical world, among whom we mention Dr. Davide Monasero, European Center for Disease Control's TB specialist, Dr. Lucica Ditiu, European Region World Health Organization's TB Officer. The governmental institutions were represented by Conf. Dr. Aurel Nechita, Ministry of Health's Secretary of State and also by Conf. Dr. C-tin Marica, PNCT's National Technical Coordinator.

Considering the fact that the WTD in Romania was organized by The Center for Health Policies and Services (CHPS), benefiting of Global Fund's finance through Romanian Angel Appeal Foundation (RAA), the two nongovernmental organizations were represented at the event by Dr. Silvia Asandi, General Director of RAA Foundation and also Dr. Ioana Daramus, CHPS's Programs Coordinator.

You can access here the press release launched for the WTD celebration in Romania!