24th March – World Tuberculosis (TB) Day
Author and Institutional affiliation: Dorothy Aanyu, Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program-Field Epidemiology Track, Tel: 256774009185, Email: daanyu@uniph.go.ug
Each year, approximately 90,000 people in Uganda get sick of TB, a figure that would be much higher if it had not been for the landmark discovery by Dr. Robert Koch.
We commemorate the date when Dr. Koch announced in 1882 that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.
At the time of Dr. Koch’s announcement, TB was raging through Europe and the Americas, causing the death of one out of every seven people. Koch’s discovery opened the way towards diagnosing and curing TB.
The day is designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis today remains an epidemic in much of the world.
