The Wire

There’s been a new political push to tackle the problem of Tuberculosis in the Asia-Pacific region. Today the Australian TB Caucus was launched in Canberra. It’s a group of politicians across political parties pledging to make combating TB a priority. Tuberculosis or TB is a bacterial disease that mist commonly affects the lungs. ITs symptoms include coughing, sometimes with blood, fever, chest pain, weakness and weight loss. TB rivals HIV/AIDS as the world’s most deadly infectious disease killing about one-point-five million people a year, with 60-percent of those cases are in our region. But it doesn’t get the attention that HIV does. The TB Caucus aims to change that.