World TB Day 2015: "Reach the 3 Million: Reach, Treat, Cure Everyone

• The Health website has been updated with information on World TB Day 2015 and other relevant links. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/cdna-ntac-WTD.htm
• Similar to last year, there will be a badge on the Health home page (www.health.gov.au) that will link through the page mentioned above.  This will go live on Monday.
• On Tuesday, a Tweet will be released that will include links to the above webpage and the Union conference. The Health twitter account is @HealthAgeingAu.  
• The Health Minister and the Ministers Office has been briefed on World TB Day 2015 and the current status of TB control in Australia. I have also let the Minister’s Office know about the Union Conference later in the year.

Every year, on 24 March, the world marks World TB Day (WTBD), one of the world's top health challenges with 9 million new TB cases and the deaths of nearly 1.5 million people each year. The day is an occasion to mobilise political and social commitment for further progress towards eliminating TB as a public health burden.

For World TB Day 2015, we are calling on all partners to continue to call for a global effort to continue their commitment to find, treat and cure all people with TB and accelerate progress towards the bold goal of ending TB by 2035.

World TB Day is designed to build public awareness that TB today remains an epidemic in much of the world, causing the deaths of nearly one-and-a-half million people each year, mostly in developing countries. It commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he had discovered the cause of TB, the TB bacillus. At the time of Koch's announcement in Berlin, 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.

More information available at www.stoptb.org