India’s TB burden dips but nowhere near elimination target: global TB report
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New Delhi: India has significantly cut down its tuberculosis (TB) burden but the country is still far from achieving total elimination of the disease, says a report.
The Global TB Report 2025 released on Wednesday said the TB incidence in India has declined by 21% and deaths by 28% between 2015 and 2024, according to The Indian Express
However, the country still accounted for nearly a fourth of all the cases and deaths across the world while globally10.7 million people fell ill and 1.23 million died in 2024.
India according to the report is still far away from achieving the WHO End TB milestone for 2025 which means reducing 50% in TB incidence and 75% in TB deaths compared to 2015.
In fact India managed to cut only one half of the global 2020 milestone of ‘reducing TB incidence by 20% and deaths by 35%’.
The study however pointed out that India’s achievement is still ahead of the global average, which showed TB incidence globally falling down by 12% between 2015 and 2024.
India had set the ambitious target of eliminating the bacterial disease by the end of this year, five years ahead of the global target.
In a significant improvement in TB treatment coverage in the country in 2024, around 92% of the people, estimated to have the disease, were diagnosed and given treatment last year , marking a jump from 85% recorded in 2023.
‘India’s innovative case-finding approach, driven by the swift uptake of newer technologies, decentralisation of services and large scale community mobilisation, has led to the country’s treatment coverage to surge to over 92% in 2024 from 53% in 2015,’ the Union Health Ministry said in a statement.
The health ministry attributed this achievement to innovative testing methods like AI-enabled handheld X-rays which enables detecting asymptomatic cases alongside community mobilization contributing to it.