India's TB Incidence Plunges 21%, Outpacing Global Decline

According to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global TB Report 2025, India's tuberculosis (TB) incidence has seen a significant decline in recent years. From 2015 to 2024, the country's TB incidence fell by 21%, from 237 cases per lakh population to 187 per lakh population. This decline is nearly double the pace observed globally, which stands at 12%.

India's innovative approach to TB case finding, driven by the swift uptake of newer technologies, decentralization of services, and large-scale community mobilization, has been instrumental in this progress. As a result, the country's treatment coverage has surged to over 92% in 2024, up from 53% in 2015. This has led to the diagnosis of 26.18 lakh TB patients in 2024, out of an estimated incidence of 27 lakh cases.

Furthermore, the number of "missing cases" – those who had TB but were not reported to the program – has decreased from an estimated 15 lakh in 2015 to less than one lakh in 2024. Additionally, there has been no significant increase in the number of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB patients in the country, and the treatment success rate under the TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan has increased to 90%, surpassing the global treatment success rate of 88%.