World Tuberculosis Day – March 24, 2022 – is a campaign (endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), among many organizations) that serves to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social, and economic consequences of tuberculosis (TB) and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way to diagnosing and curing this disease.
TB remains a top infectious killer in the world and drug-resistant TB remains a global public health crisis. In 2020, an estimated 10 million people worldwide fell ill with TB and 1.5 million died from it. But TB is preventable and curable.
Ending the TB epidemic by 2030 is among the health targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
You can read more about this disease and find lots of data from these sites:
- Centers for Disease Control (CDC): TB basics, testing & diagnosis, data & statistics, professional resources, research, and focus on TB in specific populations, personal story videos
- World Health Organization (WHO): easy to read fact sheets, infographics, guidelines, detailed current global data report, and broad initiatives
Did you know that tuberculosis put Northern New York, specifically Saranac Lake, on the map?!Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau established the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium in the Village of Saranac Lake in 1884. Thousands of people, traveling from all over the world, were treated to the ‘fresh air’ cure there and in surrounding ‘cure cottages‘. These included famous folks like writer Robert Louis Stevenson ,composer Bela Bartok, and artist Maxfield Parrish. Trudeau also established the first American laboratory solely dedicated to tuberculosis research. The Sanatorium closed in 1954, after the discovery of effective antibiotic treatments for TB. The work of the Saranac Laboratory for the Study of Tuberculosis was continued by Dr. Francis B. Trudeau, Edward’s grandson, and evolved into the Trudeau Institute, which continues as an independent, not-for-profit, biomedical research center today. Its scientific mission is to make breakthrough discoveries that lead to improved human health. The Institute partners with Clarkson to offer the Biomedical Scholars Semester Program, an intensive semester-long living and learning experience for Clarskon students at Trudeau in Saranac Lake.
You can immerse yourself in history at the site of the Trudeau Lab Museum in Saranac Lake – it’s well worth a visit!
More History
- History of the Trudeau Institute (with lots of great photos)
- An Autobiography: Edward Livingston Trudeau, M.D. (full text PDF freely available on Hathi Trust)
- Condrau, Flurin, and Michael Worboys. Tuberculosis Then and Now : Perspectives on the History of an Infectious Disease, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010.