Each year, tuberculosis (TB) makes million of victims in the world, out of which a few tens of thousands only in Romania. And this in the context in which the general population only heard about the illness and tends to consider it an eradicated problem, an illness of the past century.
“Is still there tuberculosis in the 21st century?”
Yes, there is, and at present it became a universal public health priority. The data of the World Health Organization of October 2014 shows that more than one third of the total world population is carrier of TB bacilli, and one in 10 carrier persons becomes sick. 9 million persons became sick only in 2013, while 1.5 million died, meaning almost 4109 deaths daily. At global level, it is estimated that in 2013, 480,000 people developed drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB).
Nonetheless, due to the sustained efforts for the rapid diagnostic and proper and directly observed treatment, at global level, the death rate caused by TB decreased with 45% between 1993 and 2013. About 37 million lives were saved between 2000 and 2013, due to early diagnostic and correct treatment. 86% of the people who developed TB and were under treatment in 2012 were successfully treated.
In Romania, the desease kills 1100 persons each year and affects other 16,000 yearly, most of them among the young and active population. Romania is the country of the European Union with the highest number of TB cases (about 20% of the TB patients in the EU are from Romania). Although the treatment success rate is about 86% at new cases, Romania has one of the lowest multidrug resistant TB curing rate in world, having an annual increase of the infectious patients pool.
Still, Romania is not an isolated case. The World Health Organization mentions, among the challenges in the area of tuberculosis control in the European Union, the need of reform in the health sector, which to include a higher engagement of the primary health care in TB control and a still limited political and financial engagement of the governments in TB control.
