World Tuberculosis Day 2011

Geneva, 24th of March 2011

World Tuberculosis Day 2011: towards a turning point

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease that, despite being curable, continues to kill nearly 2 million people each year and infect around 9 million. "Tuberculosis kills 15 people every hour. Between now and 2015, more than 10 million people will die from a disease that is both preventable and curable." says Mr Bekele Gueleta, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Universal access to affordable and effective diagnostics, treatment and care is urgently needed and should be placed at the top of the health agenda in TB endemic countries. Attaining the goal of eliminating TB will require strong political will, adequate resources, and a focus on the poorest and most vulnerable communities, who are disproportionately affected by TB and whose precarious situation is often exacerbated by the disease.

For World TB Day 2011, the IFRC has issued an advocacy report together with Stop TB partnership, Towards a tuberculosis-free world, whose call is to scale-up TB  interventions at all levels.

This year's advocacy report challenges us to look at the fight against TB in a different way:

• From a public health perspective, what is needed is an accelerated increase in TB interventions, intensified case-finding among at risk populations, and a greater focus on upstream prevention.
  
• From a development perspective, a new focus is required that assesses interventions based on social and economic determinants such as malnutrition, gender inequalities, alcohol abuse, poor housing, low quality education, indoor air pollution and poverty.
  
• From a human rights perspective, TB patients need to live in dignity and with respect. We need to reach out to communities in order to prevent, treat, care and support all those either living with TB or at riskbeing infected with the disease.

The advocacy report focuses once again on Red Cross Red Crescent immense TB activities as an added value in many parts of the world. The idea is to recognize Red Cross Red Crescent staff and volunteers capacity to mobilize communities and empower people with TB. Such network should also be considered as a crucial connection to civil society and their respective governments. Governments and partners must capitalize on this to effectively banish TB.

Mr Gueleta mentions that "last year alone, more than 5 million community members were mobilized in TB-endemic countries through more than 80,000 active Red Cross Red Crescent staff and volunteers. They helped identify vulnerable groups, provided health education and monitored patients to ensure that the correct drugs are taken, visiting them five or six times a week if needed." These volunteers live and work alongside the very people they help – surely this active community mobilization is the best defence against TB.

In 2010, the Red Cross Red Crescent provided daily care to 150,000 TB patients worldwide, of whom 10,000 were patients with MDR-TB and 40 000 were co-infected with HIV. The plan is to expand the programme worldwide to have 1.7 million of the most-difficult-to-reach patients enrolled in the IFRC’s TB programme by 2015.

Towards a tuberculosis-free world, IFRC and Stop TB partnership advocacy report, March 2011

Towards a world free of tuberculosis, IFRC Secretary General Bekele Gueleta Opinion piece, 23rd of March 2011

TB target: to find 3 million people not getting proper treatment, press release

More information on the IFRC website