Author:Mr. Chander Shekhar Sibal, Senior Vice President, Head of Medical Division, Fujifilm India

Every year, on 24 March World Tuberculosis (TB) Day is observed to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB, and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic. The theme for this year’s World TB Day 2021 is ‘The Clock is Ticking’ which emphasizes that the world is running out of time to act on the commitments to end TB made by global leaders. This is especially critical in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that has put End TB progress at risk, and to ensure equitable access to prevention and care in line with WHO’s drive towards achieving Universal Health Coverage.

Deemed as the world’s top infectious killer, Tuberculosis continuous to be one of the world’s deadliest contagious diseases in the country. On a daily basis, approximately 4000 people lose their lives to TB and close to 28,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. While the Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 63 million lives since the year 2000. However, with the world battling the coronavirus pandemic, doctors suggest that it is time people gain more awareness about TB too and take necessary precautions.

Being a country with the highest global case counts, how India manages with the disease is crucial. Witnessing the growing number of cases of Tuberculosis (TB) caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) that usually affects the lungs, we need to come together to reach the targeted 30 million people with TB preventive treatment by 2022. To offer preventive treatment to those people most at risk including 24 million household contacts of TB patients – 4 million of whom are children under 5 – and 6 million people living with HIV. It is seen that active tuberculosis usually exhibits signs and symptoms and can be both pulmonary and extrapulmonary. If not treated at the right time, the disease can be dangerous and ultimately lead to severe complications and even death.

With the introduction of numerous techniques that is helping cure and prevent people from deadly diseases, it is important to raise awareness about tuberculosis (TB) and to advocate more efforts to eliminate it. We have been investing and focusing on various AI technologies that uniquely support radiologists’ workflow needs both today and tomorrow. Committed to pushing healthcare to new heights, we have always aimed at advancing our solutions by offering cutting-edge deep learning technologies with our world-renowned image-processing heritage.

In line with the global initiatives to curb the spread of the disease, it is even our long-term goal to provide an open AI-platform that seamlessly manages the delivery of AI technologies through Synapse clinical applications and enables a more powerful diagnostic workflow. To accelerate AI development, we have been doing our bit by associating with organisations and healthcare institutes to educate them on the latest technological innovations.

With this year’s theme of ‘The Clock is clicking’, we should all pledge to focus on ensuring continuity of essential health services, including national programs to end communicable & deadly diseases like TB during these difficult times. If the people of our society are healthy, our nation will be healthy.