After the implementation of revolutionary Directly Observed Treatment Strategy (DOTS) for Tuberculosis (TB), Bangladesh has been experiencing a very high rate of cure from TB. However, the country continues to have high burden of TB and considered as one of the 22 countries with highest burden of TB in the world. Experts identified poor detection rate of TB cases as the major challenge to fight TB in this country.

Tuberculosis continues to kill two Indians every three minutes and nearly 1,000 every day, yet the task of accurately diagnosing the disease gets relatively low priority. This often leads to delayed treatment, perpetuating the spread of TB and drug-resistant TB.

Tuberculosis is easily one of India’s most critical public health issues, but TB prevention and control efforts face several challenges. Of these, perhaps the most significant is the effective engagement and participation of India’s vast private sector, which manages 60 per cent of all TB patients.

One in five people infected with tuberculosis in the Americas remains unaware of the disease, due to failure to access health services or because they are not properly diagnosed, according to estimates by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO).

18 March 2014 - “Find…treat…cure tuberculosis (TB) patients” is the call of this year’s World TB Day, due to be marked globally on 24 March 2014.

MANILA, 22 March - On World TB Day (24 March), the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific Region reiterates the need for governments, policy-makers, health care providers and civil society organizations to prioritize interventions to urgently find, treat and cure the millions of people who remain undiagnosed with the disease.

With 18,000 people dying of tuberculosis (TB) per year, Vietnam ranks 12th out of the 22 highest TB burden countries identified by the World Health Organization, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health has warned ahead of the World TB Day (March 24).

In advance of World TB Day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released 2 new studies, one summarizing the latest national TB surveillance data for 2013, the second looking at the toll of drug-resistant TB in the U.S.

Publications and blogs highlight issues related to the spread of tuberculosis (TB) in advance of World TB Day on Monday, March 24. The Lancet discusses progress made in controlling TB since the the WHO declared it a global health emergency in 1993 (Herbert et al., 3/22). In a post in the BMJ Group Blog, Goodman Makhanda, who lives in South Africa and was diagnosed with XDR-TB last year, and Jennifer Hughes, a medical officer working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on TB in South Africa, discuss drug-resistant TB and treatment (3/20). Stacie C. Stender, an infectious disease expert at Jhpiego and vice chair of the Coordinating Committee of Scientific Activities of the International Union Against TB and Lung Disease, examines efforts and challenges in the response to TB in a post on Jhpiego (3/20).

Chased by tuberculosis for more than twenty years, Igor (42), from the small town Anenii Noi in Moldova, lives in dark hopelessness for a recovery. His wife has passed away and his children have been taken to a specialised institution.