World TB Day 2021: the clock is ticking, it’s time to end TB

24 March 2021

World Tuberculosis (TB) Day 2021 in the WHO European Region is an opportunity to focus on successes and achievements, while voicing a warning about the twin threat of drug-resistant TB and the toll taken by the COVID-19 pandemic. The day will be used to raise awareness and inspire action to finally end TB.

The latest TB surveillance and monitoring report for the WHO European Region, which is issued jointly by WHO/Europe and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, will be released on 22 March. It will show that with the decreasing burden of TB, the European Region was on course to meet the End TB Strategy milestone for 2020 and the Regional target for the reduction of the TB incidence rate. However, it also reveals that 20 000 people still die of TB each year, every third TB patient has a multidrug-resistant form of the disease and treatment success rates are suboptimal.

World TB Day is celebrated on 24 March each year around the world. The overall goal of the day is to raise awareness about the global burden of TB and to highlight the status of TB prevention and control efforts.