WHO urges 33 countries to step up fight vs tuberculosis

The World Health Organization has called on 33 countries, including some of the world’s richest, to recognize the continued danger of tuberculosis and try to wipe it out by 2050. These countries – ranging from Australia to France and Germany, and New Zealand to the United States – were singled out because they “are really at the low level of incidence that allows them to truly target elimination,” said Marco Raviglione, head of the WHO’s anti-TB program. TB, which can be spread by sneezing, is the the deadliest disease after AIDS to be caused by a single infectious agent. While preventable and curable, it still infects some 155,000 people every year. in the 33 developed nations listed, around 10,000 died of the disease in 2013, WHO said.

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