Since 1947, Turkish people celebrate first week of January as national ‘’Tuberculosis Education and Awareness Week’’ all over the country.
In 2024, we decide to celebrate this public activity with children under 15 years in Samsun Province. Samsun is the biggest province of Black Sea region with 1,3 million population where tuberculosis incidence was 13,1/100.000 in 2023.
This year our motto was ‘’ 'We Will End Tuberculosis Hand in Hand'’. We prepared a lung-shaped dream tree and bought colorful dyes for hand-print; and held our activities at shopping mall. For two days, children painted the dream tree with colorful handprints with our slogan. Our aim was to focus children on infection also stigma prevention and control.
These events continued throughout the day, for two days sometimes we danced with songs of children or took photos for comemmorize the activity.
You can access our event video from link
Also in another section of activity area, we asked children to choose one of the lung-themed drawings and paint it with crayons. Children colored selected drawing as they imagined and together we hung them in exhibition hall. While painting they were both informed and became future volunteers of our work against tuberculosis.
We took our dream tree to Samsun Provincial Health Directorate on the
2nd day. This time, children painted our dream tree with our Health Director Mustafa Uras M.D. and our officials. They made pictures and hung them at the entrance of our directorate. These painting our children painted were also exhibited at Samsun Provincial Health Directorate throughout the week.
Although TB is a treatable disease, it is unacceptable that 3,500 people die every day in the world. Infection control and stigma are as important as treatment. This year, we are carrying out our awareness activities with children by focusing on these issues. If we inform young generations periodically and collaborate both for tuberculosis treatment and prevention then we can imagine to END TB.
We can only end tuberculosis by joining hands!
24 March World TB Day activitySamsun Tuberculosis Provincial Coordination
derya.oztomurcuk@saglik.gov.tr