World TB Day, falls on 24 March each year, a day designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis (TB) today remains an epidemic in much of the world.
TB is preventable and curable, yet it remains the world’s most common infectious disease killer. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10 million people fell ill from TB in 2017 and 1.6 million people died.
Only 64 percent of the estimated 10 million global cases of TB were actually diagnosed and notified.
On World TB Day, the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) urges governments to maximise on the success of the first ever United Nation (UN) High-Level Meeting (HLM) on the fight against TB held in 2018, which produced a UN political declaration on TB and the endorsement at the highest level to take the necessary steps to end the TB epidemic.
Please use and share the World TB Toolkit.
World TB Day Toolkit
- World TB Day Fact Sheet
- View the FIRS World TB Day statement
- Use #WorldTBDay
- Tag @FIRS_LungsFirst in tweets
- World TB Day Digital Images:
About the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS)
The Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) is an organisation comprised of the world's leading international respiratory societies working together to improve lung health globally: American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST), American Thoracic Society (ATS), Asian Pacific Society of Respirology (APSR), Asociación Latino Americana De Tórax (ALAT), European Respiratory Society (ERS), International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (The Union), Pan African Thoracic Society (PATS), Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA), and the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD).
The goal of FIRS is to unify and enhance efforts to improve lung health through the combined work of its more than 70,000 members globally
