India’s Tuberculosis burden is way above govt milestone targets: WHO

New Delhi: Tuberculosis (TB) patients in India are over two times higher and TB death rate three times more than the milestone goals set by the Narendra Modi government to eliminate the disease, according to a new WHO report.

The report that comes a year ahead of India’s self-imposed target of achieving elimination by 2025, estimates that the country’s TB count was 195 per 1,00,000 population, or 2.5 times higher than the 77 per 1,00,000 population - the target set by the Union Health ministry.

Similarly, the TB death rate in 2023 was 22 per 1,00,000 population, or over three times higher than the milestone goal set by the government - 6 per 1,00,000 population.

India tops every category of the world’s TB burden ranging from drug resistant cases to mortality as per the World Health Organisation’s global TB report 2024 that red flags the resurgence of TB as the world’s top killer infectious disease.

With the disease disproportionately affecting people in 30 high-burden countries, India (26 per cent), Indonesia (10 per cent), China (6.8 per cent), the Philippines (6.8 per cent) and Pakistan (6.3 per cent) together account for 56 per cent of the global TB burden.

According to the report, 55 per cent of people who developed TB were men, 33 per cent were women and 12 per cent were children and young adolescents.

“The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage, when we have the tools to prevent it, detect it and treat it,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said in a statement.

The WHO End TB Strategy - which seeks to eliminate TB as a public health problem by 2035 - had set 2025 milestones of a 50 per cent reduction in TB incidence rate and a 75 per cent reduction in the number of TB deaths as compared to 2015. Between 2015 and 2023, India’s TB count reduced by 18 per cent and death rates by 24 per cent.

The Union Health Ministry’s national strategic plan for TB elimination puts a target of having a TB occurance rate (per 100,000 population) of 142 by 2020; 77 by 2023 and 44 by 2025. The WHO report shows that none of the targets have been achieved even though there have been improvements.

Five countries accounted for more than half of the global number of people estimated to have developed multi drug resistant/Rifampicin-resistant TB in 2023 with India (27 per cent) once again topping the chart followed by the Russian Federation (7.4 per cent), Indonesia (7.4 per cent), China (7.3 per cent) and the Philippines (7.2 per cent).