Yes! We Can End Tuberculosis – Dr Maclawrence Famuyiwa

 

 

 

Yes we can end Tuberculosis is the 2025 theme to mark World Tuberculosis Day.   Dr Maclawrence Famuyiwa harps on the significance of the TB day which is celebrated globally. The General Hospital Apapa has also pledged to enlighten the public that the port city is ready to provide medical services to that effect.

 

Excerpts

 

Each year, World Tuberculosis TB Day is commemorated on 24 March for the purpose of raising public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of tuberculosis (TB) and as a way of stepping up efforts to end the TB epidemic globally.

This date marks that day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced to the world that he had just discovered the bacterium that causes TB. That discovery was the gateway that led to the diagnosing and curing of this disease.

This year’s theme is Yes! We Can End TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver. This serves as a bold call for hope, urgency, and accountability.
Commit
At a High-Level World UN meeting in 2023, leaders pledged to accelerate efforts to end TB. This is to emphasize that what we need now is real action in forms of rapid implementation of WHO guidance and policies, strengthening national strategies, and full funding TB programs.
Invest
There’s no way TB can be defeated without proper financing. So there is a need for us to take a bold, broad approach to fund innovation, to close identified gaps in access to TB prevention, treatment and care, as well as to take research and innovation to the next level of advancement.
Deliver
Community leadership, cross-sectoral collaboration and civil society action are paramount in successfully turning our commitments into action in form of scaling up proven WHO-recommended interventions: early detection, diagnosis, preventive treatment, and high-quality TB care, particularly for drug-resistant TB.
Tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Each day, around 3425 people die a a result of having TB and about 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease.

An estimated 79 million lives have been saved globally through world-wide efforts in combatting TB since the year 2000 and since 2022, there has been a noticeable worldwide recovery in the scale-up of TB diagnosis and treatment services. This is remarkable considering the disruptive effects the advent of COVID-19 had on TB services.

Global Tuberculosis Report recently reported that the WHO highlighted that more than 8.2 million people with TB received access to diagnosis and treatment in 2023, a significant improvement from 7.5 million in 2022 and well above the levels of 5.8 million reported in 2020 and 6.4 million in 2021 respectively. Though, there is still a large global gap between the estimated number of people who fell ill with TB and the number of people that were newly diagnosed.

Furthermore, the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting set new targets to end TB, and the TB Vaccine Accelerator Council was launched, to facilitate the development, licensing, and equitable use of new TB vaccines.

 

However, progress has been insufficient in meeting global TB targets set in 2018 with major reasons being disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing conflicts.

The General Hospital Apapa – The Port City Hospital will be joining other stakeholders worldwide to commemorate this year’s World Tuberculosis Day on March 24th, 2025 by engaging in mass screening of people for tuberculosis and raising community awareness about the signs and symptoms of TB and the urgent need for any diagnosed patient to access TB care that we provide under the most hospitable and friendly ambience in our facility, General Hospital Apapa – the port city Hospital.

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