New Delhi: As India works towards its ambitious goal of eliminating tuberculosis (TB) by 2025—five years ahead of the global deadline—a new World Health Organization (WHO) report reveals that the country bears the highest global TB burden, accounting for 26% of all cases worldwide.
The WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2024, released on Tuesday, highlighted that India ranks highest among 30 countries identified as having a high TB burden. Following India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, and Pakistan contributed 10%, 6.8%, 6.8%, and 6.3% of global cases, respectively. Collectively, these five nations account for 56% of the total global TB burden.
In 2023, TB reclaimed its position as the world’s leading infectious disease killer, overtaking Covid-19. The WHO report indicated that approximately 8.2 million new TB cases were reported last year, marking the highest figure since global monitoring began in 1995. This number represents a significant increase from the 7.5 million cases reported in 2022.
The disease remains more prevalent among men, who accounted for 55% of cases, while women made up over 30%. Children and young adolescents constituted 12% of TB cases globally.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed deep concern over the persistence of TB, noting, "The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage when we have the tools to prevent, detect, and treat it." Dr. Ghebreyesus urged countries to fulfill their commitments to expand the use of available interventions and work towards ending TB.
The report identified five major risk factors contributing to new TB cases: undernutrition, HIV infection, alcohol use disorders, smoking (predominantly among men), and diabetes. It emphasized that addressing these factors, alongside broader determinants such as poverty and GDP per capita, requires comprehensive, coordinated action across multiple sectors. Additionally, the report called for increased investment in TB research.
A positive development highlighted in the report was the narrowing gap between the estimated number of new TB cases and those reported. The gap decreased to around 2.7 million, a notable decline from the 4 million cases that went unreported during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
Despite sustained TB preventive treatment coverage for people living with HIV, multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) remains a significant public health challenge. Treatment success rates for MDR or rifampicin-resistant TB (MDR/RR-TB) reached 68% in 2023. However, only 44% of the estimated 400,000 people who developed MDR/RR-TB were diagnosed and treated last year, underscoring the need for improved detection and treatment strategies.