Each year, we recognize World TB Day on March 24. This annual event commemorates the date in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced his discovery of the bacillus that causes tuberculosis (TB) which mostly affects the lungs. TB is spread from person to person through the air. One person sneezes, the next inhales and becomes infected.
World TB Day is a day to educate the public about the impact of TB around the world. Second to COVID-19, TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases. For the first time in over a decade, TB deaths increased in 2020 according to the World Health Organization’s 2021 Global TB report and this is due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The theme of World TB Day 2022 – ‘Invest to End TB. Save Lives.’ – conveys the urgent need to invest resources and intensify the fight against TB to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal commitment made by global leaders to end TB by 2030.
66,000,000 lives have been saved since 2000, but in 2020 9,900,000 people fell ill with TB and 1,500,000 people died of TB in that same year. That is 4,100 per day, 3 per minute. A staggering number if you realize that TB is curable and preventable. We need to do more to make sure prevention and curative treatments reach the patients.
i+solutions’ vision is a world where no medical need goes unmet. Saving and improving lives is at the core of our work. We support the fight against TB not only in words, but also in actions. In 2021, we facilitated the ordering and delivery of over 336,000 treatment courses of 3HP novel short course TB preventive treatment Isoniazid/Rifapentine 300/300 mg and Rifapentine 150mg for 11 countries in collaboration with the Aurum Institute’s Unitaid funded project IMPAACT4TB. The project is still ongoing and has successfully catalysed orders for 22 additional countries. To date, we have delivered over 660,000 treatment courses of 3HP since project inception in 2019.
i+solutions is also involved in several projects that strengthen health systems at country level, aimed at improving transparency in the supply chain to ensure delivery of medical products to patients in the last mile, in those remote rural areas where TB is mostly present.
Impact by Innovation!
#WorldTBDay #InvestToEndTB #EndTB @StopTB
