World TB Day 2024 – Yes! We Can End TB

24 March is World Tuberculosis Day, and this year’s theme continues last year’s World TB Day theme, ‘Yes! We can end TB’, by drawing attention to tuberculosis and our collective power to achieve the 2023 UN High-Level Meeting on TB Political Declaration targets, which will put the world on course to end TB by 2030.

3% of global tuberculosis cases are reported from the Americas, with an associated mortality rate of 7.3%. The epidemiology of tuberculosis varies considerably between countries within Latin America; three countries — Peru, Mexico, and Brazil — account for slightly more than half of all TB cases in the region.

Tobacco smoking increases the risk of infection by mycobacterium tuberculosis as well as the risk of TB disease development in the infected individuals. In 2021, of the 10.6 million people who fell ill with TB, nearly 0.7 million were attributed to tobacco smoking, according to the World Health Organization.

Recent research has shown that cigarette smoking doubles the risk of active tuberculosis (TB) and accounts for up to 20% of all active TB cases worldwide. With the estimated prevalence of tobacco smoking in adults in the Region of the Americas being 15.2%, the burden of tobacco remains a critical challenge to effective TB control in the region.

The World Health Organization (WHO) End TB Strategy provides an opportunity for greater alignment of efforts to fight tuberculosis and tobacco smoking epidemics. Government commitment and investment are essential for joint strategic policy development, planning, implementation, and monitoring. The strategy was endorsed in 2014 by the Sixty-seventh World Health Assembly and aims to “end the global TB epidemic” by 2035.

Harm reduction strategies have been deployed in public health to combat smoking in many countries across the world. They should be considered a critical guide in reducing smoking rates to reduce TB infections. Providing adult smokers with less harmful alternatives to cigarettes is a decisive step in achieving the End TB Strategy.

Elimination of tobacco smoking among TB patients will help toward the elimination of TB in the Americas.