WHO report says India logged highest number of tuberculosis cases in 2024, drug-resistant cases show surge

As per the report, India’s TB incidence rate now stands at 187 per one lakh population, an improvement from last year. But India also housed a third of the world’s drug-resistant TB cases in 2024.

New Delhi: India once again has topped the global tuberculosis burden, accounting for a quarter of the cases worldwide, the World Health Organisation said in its latest report released on Wednesday.

As per the report, India’s TB incidence rate now stands at 187 per one lakh population, an improvement from last year. But it is still way short of the Union government’s elimination target of achieving 77 cases per 100,000 people by 2025.

Similarly TB mortality figures have improved marginally to 21 per lakh population, but it is more than three times higher than the elimination target mentioned in the national TB report of the Union Health Ministry.

According to the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2025, just eight countries contribute 67% of the global total with India (25%) leading the chart followed by Indonesia (10%), the Philippines (6.8%), China (6.5%) and Pakistan (6.3%). Others are Nigeria (4.8%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.9%) and Bangladesh (3.6%).

“While TB occurs in every part of the world, a major proportion of the people who develop TB disease each year are in 30 high TB burden countries, which accounted for 87% of the global total in 2024,” Tereza Kasaeva, Director, WHO Department for HIV, TB, Hepatitis said in a statement.

“Five countries accounted for more than half of the worldwide total: India, Indonesia, the Philippines, China and Pakistan.”

Worryingly, India also housed a third of the world’s drug-resistant TB cases in 2024. Four nations accounted for more than half of the global number of people estimated to have developed multi-drug resistant and Rifampicin-resistant TB in 2024: India (32%), China and the Philippines (both above 7%) and Russia (6.7%).

On the plus side, the number of people developing drug-resistant TB each year has been slowly declining. People with multidrug-resistant or Rifampicin-resistant TB accounted for 3.2% of the TB burden in 2024.

Over 164 000 people received treatment for drug-resistant TB in 2024. The latest data show an improvement in the treatment success rate, to 71%, up from 68% the previous year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018 announced India’s TB elimination target deadline of 2025, which is five years ahead of the UN goal of ending TB by 2030.

Reacting to the WHO report, the Union Health Ministry said India achieved a higher reduction in TB mortality than the global reduction while treatment coverage increases to 92%, placing India ahead of other high-burden countries and global universal health coverage. This milestone reflects the success of innovative case-finding strategies and expanded access to care.

The ministry said more than 26.18 lakh TB patients were diagnosed in 2024, out of an estimated incidence of 27 lakh cases. This has helped reduce the number of “missing cases” – those who had TB but were not reported to the programme.