STATCAST – Week of March 25, 2019

TRANSCRIPT

March 24 of this week was World Tuberculosis Day, and the statistics on this long-time national scourge point to a major public health success story over the last century.

In 2018, a total of 9,029 new tuberculosis cases were reported in the United States, representing a decline from 2017, and a major drop from the 55,494 cases reported back in 1960. Vital statistics from NCHS reveal there were 515 deaths from TB in the United States in 2017… a century before, in 1917, there were 100,789 deaths from TB.

March 26 of this week was American Diabetes Alert Day. Over 10% of American adults age 18 and over have been diagnosed with Diabetes, according to data from the National Health Interview Survey collected from January thru September 2018. More than 83,500 Americans died from the disease in 2017, according to NCHS Vital Statistics.

Finally, March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. The second leading cause of cancer death in America claimed 53,447 lives in 2017, which is more than the number of deaths from kidney disease — the 9^th leading cause of death in the country. Early detection is crucially important in treating colorectal cancer, and data from the National Health Interview Survey show that nearly 60% of Americans ages 50 to 75 received a colonoscopy in 2015 – nearly 3 times as high as the percent in 2000.