World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, on 24th March 2007, recognizes the global fight against tuberculosis. According to WHO, TB killed an estimated 1.6 million worldwide in 2005. While TB remains a major health problem around the world, Singapore has continued to see a drop in the number of TB cases. In 2006, 1,256 new cases of TB were reported among Singapore residents in 2006, giving an incidence rate of 35 per 100,000.
To combat the problem of TB, the Ministry of Health embarked on the Singapore Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (STEP) in 1997. The key component of the STEP is early diagnosis and proper treatment of patients with TB. This will cure and prevent further transmission of the disease and emergence of drug-resistant TB.
TB is an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs. It is transmitted from person to person via droplets from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease.
In healthy people, infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis often causes no symptoms, since the person’s immune system acts to “fend off” the bacteria. The symptoms of active TB of the lung are coughing, sometimes with sputum or blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats. Tuberculosis is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.
To read more about the disease and global efforts to combat its prevalence, you may visit: http://www.stoptb.org/
